The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that Marc Wyatt (pictured) will serve as acting director of the agency’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE). Wyatt succeeds Andrew Bowden, who earlier this week announced that he will be leaving the SEC at the end of April to rejoin the private sector.

Wyatt has served as the deputy director of OCIE since October 2014, where he has led the Technology Controls Program and served as a member of the office’s Operating and Executive Committees. He is also the national co-coordinator of the OCIE’s Private Fund Specialized Working Group and recently participated in the creation of its Private Fund Examination Unit, whose attorneys, accountants, and examiners specialise in examinations of advisers to private funds. Wyatt joined the SEC in December 2012 as a senior specialised examiner focused on examinations of advisers to hedge funds and private equity funds.

According to the SEC’s examination programme, released in January 2015, the OCIE will concentrate making sales practices and recommendations to invest in structured products and higher yielding investments as one of its priorities for 2015. The programme highlights its areas of chief concern as protecting retail investors, especially those saving for or in retirement; assessing market-wide risks; and using data analytics to identify signs of potential illegal activity.

The OCIE conducts the SEC’s National Exam Program through examinations of SEC-registered investment advisers, investment companies, broker-dealers, self-regulatory organisations, clearing agencies, and transfer agents. It uses a risk-based approach to examinations to fulfil its mission to promote compliance with US securities laws, prevent fraud, monitor risk, and inform SEC policy.

Before joining the SEC, Wyatt was a principal and senior portfolio manager of a global multi-strategy hedge fund. Prior to that, he was a senior investment banker in the US and UK.

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