Nov. 5–The US Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to name one of its top lawyers, Peter H. Bresnan, as interim district administrator of its troubled Boston office, according to severalsecurities lawyers whose work brings them in contact with the office.
Bresnan, the SEC’s deputy chief litigation counsel, spent much of the day yesterday in the Boston office, it was confirmed by an agency spokesman who asked not to be named. The office employs about 100 and oversees securities regulation throughout New England.
A day earlier, Juan M. Marcelino, chief of the office for the past 10 years, resigned as the agency citing “recent press coverage of certain matters involving the Boston Office” as a distraction for his staff.
On Oct. 24, the Globe reported that Marcelino’s staff had not acted on information from a whistleblower with information about alleged market timing by some customers of Putnam Investments. The information was later passed on to Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who investigated.
The SEC made no announcement about Bresnan yesterday and the agency spokesman said it wouldn’t be unusual for Bresnan to be in Boston, given his role overseeing litigation throughout the country.
The move to stabilize the Boston office came on a day when the agency was again subjected to withering criticism in Senate hearings examining the trading scandals at mutual fund companies.
“I question why the Securities and Exchange Commission . . . has failed to detect these practices, to impose restrictions on them or to penalize those who appear to be misusing investors’ money,” said Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, who chairs the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
Bresnan, 48, joined the SEC in 1995 after spending 13 years as a litigator with the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. Two years ago, he was named to his current job.
Bresnan was involved in several groundbreaking cases at the SEC. In 2000, he brought the commission’s first fraud case against an offshore hedge fund. In November 2001, a federal judge found fund manager Michael W. Berger had perpetrated a massive fraud that resulted in losses of $393 million. Bresnan also litigated the commission’s first case involving insider information distributed over the Internet.
“He’s a very good lawyer and he would be an excellent choice,” said Paul Huey-Burns, a lawyer at the Boston office of Dechert who previously served the SEC as assistant director of enforcement. “Most importantly, Peter’s very evenhanded. He’s not one to rush to judgment.”
The SEC has previously assigned lawyers with trial backgrounds to important administrative jobs. In 1995, trial attorney Christian J.
Mixter was assigned acting district administrator for the SEC office in Fort Worth. Mixter was later named chief litigation counsel for the agency.
“The people from the trial unit have an advantage,” said Christopher J. Bebel, a securities lawyer with Shepherd, Smith & Bebel P.C. in Houston and a former SEC enforcement attorney.
“They’re able to weigh in in an authoritative manner in all phases of the cases being handled in the region. He’d be a first-class regulator in the Boston office.”
By Jeffrey Krasner and Andrew Caffrey
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