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January 06, 2014 at 01:02 PM
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that it appointed Michael J. Osnato, Jr., to lead the Enforcement Division’s Complex and Financial Instruments Unit, formerly known as the Structured and New Products Unit.
Osnato, who joined the SEC staff in 2008 and has served as an assistant director in the New York Regional Office since 2010, will be chief of the Enforcement Division unit, which is comprised of attorneys and industry experts working in SEC offices across the country that investigate potential misconduct related to asset-backed securities, derivatives and other complex financial products.
The SEC said that Osnato has played a key role in a number of significant SEC enforcement actions, namely helping to spearhead the SEC’s case against JPMorgan Chase & Co. and two former traders for fraudulently overvaluing a complex trading portfolio in order to hide massive losses, and the subsequent action in which the bank admitted that it violated federal securities laws.
The unit was created along with four other specialized enforcement units in 2010. Andrew Ceresney, who just became the sole director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division, said last October that the division would retain the five specialized units that were created by his predecessor, Robert Khuzami. The specialized units were “a wonderful innovation that has worked extremely well,” Ceresney said.
