Alan L. Beller, director of the Division of Corporation Finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission, will return to the private sector next month.
Beller, a senior counselor to the SEC, played a leadership role in a number of the early initiatives of Chairman Christopher Cox, including proposed rules to allow Internet delivery of proxy materials; to ease the deregistration process for foreign issuers; to propose improved disclosure of executive compensation; and to expand use of interactive data to make financial reports more useful for investors.
Beller, 56, joined the SEC in January 2002, and Cox noted that Beller served during an unprecedented period of activity within the division. Under his watch, the Division of Corporation Finance met every deadline for rulemaking directed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The legislation required adoption of more than 15 separate rules prepared by the division, some as quickly as 30 days and virtually all within six months of its enactment.The division is responsible for the review of the filings of the more than 12,000 public companies that file reports with the SEC. Under Beller, the division revamped its procedures for selecting filings for review and allocating its resources to focus on the larger companies that represent the vast majority of investment dollars, periodic reports available to trading markets where most investment decisions are made, and financial disclosures that generally contain the most important information for investors.
