TheCorporateCounsel.net

It is not that often that we see a government agency downsizing, so it was interesting to learn yesterday that the SEC has decided to close its Salt Lake City Regional Office. The SEC’s press release states:

The SLRO has long been the SEC’s smallest regional office and recently has experienced significant attrition. The agency considered its budget and organizational efficiency in deciding to close the office, and it has no plans to close any other regional offices. All current staff will be aligned to existing SEC organizational components based on their current functions and agency mission needs.

The SLRO’s enforcement jurisdiction over the state of Utah will be shifted to the SEC’s Denver Regional Office. The SEC’s National Exam Program previously shifted SLRO’s local jurisdiction to Denver many years ago; thus, regional examinations authority will be unaffected by the closure of the office.

The SEC’s regional offices perform important functions for the Commission and are principally comprised of enforcement and exam staff. Back when I started at the SEC in the mid-1990s, the regional offices also included staff who reviewed Regulation A filings, a practice which ended in 1996.

Regional offices were planned for shortly after the SEC opened for business, and Joseph Kennedy opened the first regional office in New York City in December 1934. There have been changes to the regional office network over the years. For example, the first major reorganization of the SEC’s regional offices took place back in 1993, when Arthur Levitt created several regional offices and designated smaller offices as district offices, while shuttering the Seattle regional office. The district offices subsequently regained their regional office status and each of the regional offices was named for the city in which it was located back in 2007.

– Dave Lynn