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Allison Lee Gets Nod for SEC Commissioner Post

Regulatory Agencies

President Trump has announced that he intends to nominate Allison H. Lee to serve on the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

If she is confirmed by the Senate, Lee would serve for a five-year term expiring June 5, 2022, filling the seat vacated by former Commissioner Kara Stein, who left the agency at the beginning of the year. Stein’s five-year term expired in 2017, but commissioners may serve up to 18 months beyond the expiration of their terms.

Lee – whose name first surfaced last summer as a possible replacement for Stein – has more than two decades of experience serving as a securities law practitioner. She served as Enforcement Counsel in the SEC’s Denver office from 2005 to 2013, followed by a 16-month stint at SEC headquarters as Stein’s legal counsel. 

In 2015, Lee returned to the Denver office as Senior Counsel in the Complex Financial Instruments Unit. Since January 2018, she has been a corporate governance consultant with Congress Park Consulting, LLC in Washington, DC. 

Lee has also served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney. Prior to her government service, Lee was a litigation partner at Sherman & Howard, LLC in Denver. 

Since leaving the SEC, Lee has also lectured and taught courses in financial regulation and corporate law at Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and at LUISS Universita Guido Carli, Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza in Rome.

If Lee is confirmed, the SEC will be back at full force with five commissioners — three Republicans (Chairman Jay Clayton, Hester Peirce and Elad Roisman) and two Democrats (Robert Jackson, Jr. and Lee). Jackson’s term is set to expire in June 2019, but, like Stein, he could continue to serve for up to an additional 18 months.

In addition, how long it takes Lee’s nomination to move through the Senate could determine whether she has any input on the agency’s proposed rulemaking on the Regulation Best Interest, as well as other pending, high-profile SEC initiatives.

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