Erik Sirri, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Trading and Markets, has announced he will leave the Commission at the end of April and return to academia, from which he came to the SEC.

Sirri started at the Commission in September 2006, and since then has overseen the SEC's programs related to securities exchanges, brokers, dealers, clearing agencies, transfer agents, and credit rating agencies. The SEC also noted in a release announcing his planned departure that he has worked closely with the financial agencies of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets both on policy issues and in coordinating responses to the recent market crisis.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in the release that "During recent financial troubles, Erik was a calm voice who provided thoughtful advice to the Commission. The nation's investors and capital markets have benefited from his wisdom and good judgment. While I respect Erik's decision to reenter private life and rejoin his family in Massachusetts, I am grateful for his gift of public service."

In his position as director of trading and markets, Sirri led numerous regulatory and policy initiatives, including those related to the Commission's new authority over credit ratings agencies and the recent establishment of oversight of counterparties credit default swaps. The SEC plans to hold a roundtable discussion on credit ratings agencies regs on April 15. The SEC also pointed out that Sirri oversaw implementation of disclosure rules for municipal securities, the Commission's broker financial responsibility rules (dealing with net capital books and records), as well as rules related to share delivery requirements under Regulation SHO.

Before joining the SEC, Sirri was a finance professor at Harvard Business School and Babson College. He had served as Chief Economist of the SEC from 1996 to 1999.

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