SEC Appoints Enforcement Deputies

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox announced that Steven B. Harris has been appointed to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). Harris was formally a long-time Senate Banking Committee official who played a key role in the legislation that created PCAOB.

Harris was voted unanimously to the board and will assume his position on June 9. The PCAOB was established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and oversees the audit and financial statements of public companies.

Harris is currently senior vice president and special counsel for APCO Worldwide, where he advises clients on corporate governance and other financial transactions. Previously, Harris served for more than 15 years as staff director and chief counsel of the U.S. Senate on banking, housing, and urban affairs.

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George Curtis and Scott Friestad were elected to the SEC's new deputy directors in the enforcement division. Their appointments will be filling vacated positions by Peter Bresnan and Walter Ricciardi. Curtis and Friestad will join Linda Chatman Thomsen and the division’s chief counsel, Joan McKown.

Curtis, currently a regional director in Denver, joined the Commission’s staff in 2006 after 30 years in private practice. Friestad is currently an associate director in the division of enforcement in Washington, D.C., who left private practice to join the Commission as a staff attorney in 1995.

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