Departures at SEC continue with compliance director

Marc Wyatt, the director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, has become the latest senior staff member to resign from the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Wyatt, who has been with the agency for just over four years, will leave in February to return to the private sector.

OCIE chief risk and strategy officer Pete Driscoll will become acting director. Driscoll joined the SEC in 2001 as a staff attorney in the division of enforcement in Chicago.

In 2016, OCIE carried out more than 2,400 examinations, an increase of 20 percent compared with the previous year. This coincided with an increase in exam staff over the same period in excess of 20 percent.

Under Wyatt, the division created the Office of Risk and Strategy, which identifies risks among SEC-registered groups; the FINRA and Securities Industry Oversight Team, which oversees the self-regulatory organization Financial Industry Regulatory Authority; and the Technology Controls Team to monitor events and outages related to regulation systems.

Wyatt’s departure is the latest in a long line since the US presidential election in November. SEC chief operating officer Jeffery Heslop resigned last week and will leave the agency in February.

Other notable departures include chairwoman Mary Jo White, who left the agency at the end of the Obama administration, and SEC enforcement director Andrew Ceresney, who quit at the end of 2016.