The Endless Wells Notice Limbo: SEC Roundup
Welcome to SEC Roundup, a bimonthly video series by former Securities and Exchange Commission senior trial counsels Nick Morgan and Tom Zaccaro, founders of Investor Choice Advocates Network, a nonprofit advocacy group.
When an agency investigation never formally ends, the limbo itself becomes the penalty.
The SEC's June 2026 Draft Strategic Plan for FY 2026–2030 and its February 2026 updates to the Enforcement Manual have both opened a public comment period on how the Division of Enforcement operates.
In this episode, Morgan and Zaccaro sit down with securities practice leader and outside general counsel Kimble Cannon to dig into a problem the Enforcement Manual updates didn't fix: the SEC's endless Wells limbo.
A Wells notice is meant to signal that an SEC investigation is nearing its conclusion. In practice, Cannon argues, many companies instead land in an open-ended holding pattern, where regional staff continue issuing subpoenas, request repeated tolling agreements, and keep cases open for years without ever bringing them to commission leadership for a final charging decision.
The hosts point to Dodd-Frank Section 929U's 180-day mandate for post-Wells action, and how courts have treated it as an internal directive rather than an enforceable rule. They walk through a multi-year precious-metals case: bank subpoenas continued for years after the Wells notice, spanning multiple SEC administrations, with no investor losses ever identified.
See the video for the discussion.
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