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[sludgehound]

And I'm sure SEC MJO be looking into it, lol

Mary Jo White Responds to Sen. Warren Criticisms of SEC
WASHINGTON--One month ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren laid into Mary Jo White's running of the Securities and Exchange Commission . On Friday, Ms. White punched back.
In a letter to Ms. Warren released Friday, Ms. White denied the agency had been soft in punishing wrongdoers, saying the commission brought a record number of enforcement cases--as well as a record amount of fines--in the most recently completed fiscal year.
She also defended the agency's work completing new rules developed in response to the financial crisis, such as tighter restrictions on money-market mutual funds that had stymied the agency for years.
"I am proud of the agency's many important accomplishments during my tenure as SEC chair," Ms. White wrote.
The letter comes a month after Ms. Warren said the SEC chairman's tenure has been "extremely disappointing" and that Ms. White appeared to have offered her "misleading" information about the completion of a long-delayed corporate governance rule at a face-to-face meeting in May.
"I am disappointed that you have not been the strong leader that many hoped for and that you promised to be," Ms. Warren said in her own 13-page letter to Ms. White last month.
Ms. Warren, a former Harvard law professor, is a member of the Senate Banking Committee , which has oversight over financial regulators, including the SEC . She has repeatedly rebuked regulators for not being tougher on big financial institutions in the years since the 2008 crisis. A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Democrat confirmed receipt of the letter but declined to comment, saying Ms. Warren's and her staff were reviewing it.
The dispute between Sen. Warren and Ms. White comes as partisan fractures at the commission have stalled Ms. White's agenda. In 2014, Ms. White's first full year at the helm, the agency voted to complete seven rules, compared with an average of nearly 17 each year in the preceding decade. That has opened Ms. White to criticism over her leadership, particularly from Senate lawmakers who say postcrisis rules are advancing too slowly.
Among Ms. Warren's top concerns is a long-delayed executive-compensation rule mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law requiring that companies disclose the pay gap between chief executives and their employees. The agency proposed the rule in 2013 but has yet to complete it.
Though the SEC has recently reported that it now expects to complete the rule by April 2016 , Ms. Warren said that deadline--disclosed in a list of agency projects published by an arm of the White House --appears to contradict what Ms. White said in the May meeting. In that meeting, the SEC chairman predicted the SEC would complete the rule "by fall."
On Friday, Ms. White denied she mislead Ms. Warren on the timing for completing the rule, saying "the information I provided to you on May 20 was, and is, accurate."
"If asked, we would have explained that, recognizing the need for flexibility, we include in the agenda dates one year out for nearly all rules that we anticipate we may advance at various times during the coming year," she wrote.
Ms. White also challenged criticism that she failed to secure admissions of wrongdoing in a greater number of fraud settlements, and over conflicts of interest tied to her prior legal work--and her husband's existing work--that have led to her recusal from certain enforcement and other matters appearing before the commission.
"Our record implementing the new admissions policy has been strong and the protocol continues to evolve and grow," Ms. White said, adding that she participated in more enforcement matters than any of the other commissioners during her first full year as chairman.
Write to Andrew Ackerman at [e-mail]
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
07-10-15 1953ET
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