SEC Names Assoc. Director of Enforcement Division, Ethics Counsel

Washington (April 28, 2004) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed Peter H. Bresnan, who served as its lead trial counsel in the WorldCom case, an associate director in the Division of Enforcement.
 
As associate director, Bresnan, 49, will serve as a senior official in the Division of Enforcement and will assist in planning and directing the commission's investigations and other enforcement efforts. He has served as the deputy chief litigation counsel of the commission's Division of Enforcement since November 2001, and as acting district administrator in the SEC's Boston district office since November 2003.
 
In addition to prosecuting the WorldCom case, in which the commission obtained the largest civil penalty ever levied for a violation of federal securities laws, Bresnan spearheaded the commission's market-timing cases against Putnam, Massachusetts Financial Services Co., and two FleetBoston subsidiaries, in which the SEC recovered a total of $420 million on behalf of investors.
 
Prior to joining the commission as assistant chief litigation counsel in April 1995, Bresnan was a litigator at the New York law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell.
 
The commission also named William Lenox, 48, as ethics counsel. In his new position, Lenox will head the commission's Ethics Office and serve as its designated agency ethics official. Before joining the commission's Ethics Office in 1993, he worked as a senior trial attorney in the Division of Enforcement at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, in private practice at a law firm, and as a deputy chief counsel of a Senate select committee.
 
-- WebCPA staff

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