Global Proxy Watch reports today that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro will name Kayla Gillan, a prominent corporate governance champion, to a “top chief-of-staff-like post.”
“My role will be to outreach to the investor community and try to restore the organization’s reputation there,” Gillan told GPW. Gillan was a key architect of the governance program at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System before the SEC appointed her as a founding board member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2002. She left last year for become the chief administrative officer of RiskMetrics. Expect investors to celebrate the move, as it promises them a direct information channel to SEC decision-making.
Under ex-chair Christopher Cox, funds felt frozen out of the agency, whose motto is “the investors advocate.” Shapiro is also laying plans to expand the SEC’s depleted enforcement staff and lift the need for board approval before it can negotiate penalties with accused firms—a rule that cut fines by 85% since it was adopted in 2006. She will have to act quickly: the agency is getting mauled in Congress. At a Wednesday hearing on Bernard Madoff’s US $50 billion Ponzi scheme, lawmakers blasted the SEC as incapable of protecting investors.