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Hawke, who heads the SEC enforcement division's market abuse
unit, is a well-known figure among defense attorneys and on Wall
Street, where for the last few years he has presided over a
crackdown on violations of equity market structure rules and
pursued new methods for detecting insider trading.
The SEC did not say where Hawke, 52, is headed, but a person
familiar with the matter told Reuters he will be working in
Washington, D.C., for the Arnold & Porter law firm.
“Dan is known for his strategic vision and built the Market
Abuse Unit into a trailblazer in the investigation of market
structure violations and complex insider trading schemes,”
Andrew Ceresney, the SEC's enforcement director, said in a press
release.
Under Hawke's leadership, the SEC imposed the first-ever
financial penalty on a stock exchange when it filed charges
against the New York Stock Exchange for compliance failures that
the SEC said gave some customers "an improper head start" on
trading information.
The push by the market abuse team to crack down on equity market
structure rule violations came in the wake of the May 2010
"flash crash," an event in which the Dow Jones industrial
average plunged 700 points before sharply rebounding.
The incident sparked broader questions about how the markets
have evolved and whether rapid-fire trading, order routing
decisions and dark pool trading platforms could be letting some
investors get unfair advantages over others.
During his tenure, the market abuse unit has filed cases against
most of the major exchanges, including Nasdaq, Direct Edge, now
owned by BATS Global Markets, and the Chicago Board Options
Exchange, as well as dark pools, including one operated by UBS.
In addition, Hawke also helped to oversee the use of new
quantitative methods for detecting insider trading.
Among the cases he directed was one filed against a chemist at
the Food and Drug Administration for insider trading based on
drug approvals that were not yet public.
Hawke started his career at the SEC in 1999. In addition to
heading the market abuse unit since its 2010 inception, he also
previously served as the head of the SEC's Philadelphia office.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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