Erik Sirri, the Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Trading and Markets, is stepping down from the SEC and will return to academia at the end of April.
“The SEC has benefited greatly from Erik’s leadership skills, deep understanding of the financial markets, and his ability to apply economic principles to advance investor protection and improve the capital markets,” said SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro in a press release announcing Sirri’s planned departure that was published on the SEC web site today. “During recent financial troubles, Erik was a calm voice who provided thoughtful advice to the Commission.”
Sirri, a renowned securities market structure expert, joined the SEC in September 2006. Previously, he was a finance professor at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., and a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School. He has been on leave from Babson since the fall of 2006. Sirri also served as the SEC’s chief economist from 1996 to 1999.
At the SEC, Sirri was responsible for helping to oversee the operation of the U.S. securities markets and the rules guiding these markets. He served at the helm of the Trading and Markets Division at a time when competition between the exchanges and ECNs intensified and the monopoly enjoyed by the New York Stock Exchange came to an end.
During his SEC tenure, Sirri has earned the respect of senior management at NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq OMX Group and other market centers, as well as executives at broker-dealers, for his close understanding of market microstructure, as well as the conflicts and changing demands produced by heightened global competition. He oversaw the Division of Trading and Markets as Regulation NMS was implemented in 2007, and as exchanges and ECNs were consolidated into publicly traded companies. Sirri also led Trading and Markets as short selling took center stage in the unfolding financial crisis of last summer and fall, resulting in a temporary ban on short sales in financial stocks and new rules around the failure to deliver borrowed shares.
During the financial crisis, Sirri took on new responsibilities at the SEC as credit ratings agencies came under the Commission’s oversight umbrella. Sirri has delivered numerous speeches and provided Congressional testimony about some of the causes of the financial crisis and the opacity surrounding credit default swaps and synthetic CDOs, as well as the SEC’s consolidated supervised entities program.
