We bring our trial-focused approach to our Securities Enforcement Defense Practice.  From the moment a client is first contacted by the SEC, CFTC, FINRA, PCAOB, or other federal or state regulator, our team is committed to putting the government to its burden of proof, finding creative solutions and methods to drive the investigation to a swift resolution, and, when necessary, fighting all the way through trial.

Our deep experience with the SEC means that we know how to help clients—including issuers, investment advisers, broker-dealers, private funds, directors, and senior executives—get the best results in the evolving SEC enforcement and regulatory regime.  We  know how to craft the best narrative, while also maintaining credibility with regulators, and we have earned the right to be aggressive to advance our client’s interests.  We are not constrained by the “standard playbook”—we look for opportunities to do the unexpected, to challenge the regulator’s assumptions, to seize control of the narrative from day one, and to proactively address the issues.  We advocate for our clients’ interests, rather than simply react to the regulator’s demands.  We do not hesitate to escalate matters to senior supervisors and frequently draw on our hands-on understanding of the SEC’s internal mechanics and dynamics to our clients’ advantage.

One of our greatest assets is our independence.  We focus singularly on the matter at hand and zealously advocate for our clients without regard to the next deal or the next investigation.  Likewise, we are able to ask the hard questions about corporate counsel’s work and review relevant documents from the regulator’s perspective.  A client deserves a lawyer who, like the regulators investigating, has some distance from the relevant transactions and can make an objective, experienced judgment about the best strategy, witnesses, and approach to meet the client’s needs.  We are able to hit the ground running when asked to step in during any phase of the investigation or litigation, and are frequently brought on in the middle or even towards the conclusion of an investigation to change the trajectory in our clients’ favor. 

Quinn Emanuel’s Securities Enforcement Practice is led by former senior SEC officers and trial lawyers and draws from our deep bench of white-collar defense attorneys and former senior criminal prosecutors, along with the firm’s securities and private fund litigators.  We are able to nimbly navigate the legal and institutional challenges of parallel criminal and SEC investigations.  And when the investigation has an international component, QE’s cross-border practice is unparalleled.  In particular, we have extensive experience defending investigations on behalf of China-based issuers and Canadian issuers, investment advisers, and hedge funds.  Our firm’s global reach allows us to capably handle foreign and domestic criminal and regulatory investigations.

Our results speak for themselves.  We have successfully defended inquiries into financial and accounting fraud, violations of the Investment Advisers and Investment Company Act, broker-dealer regulation, cybersecurity breaches, FCPA matters, and securities registration violations.  We also have extensive experience with cryptocurrency and digital assets-related investigations, insider trading and market manipulation cases, and a variety of other securities-related matters.  We are also on the forefront of unfolding enforcement focus on ESG disclosures, Regulation Best Interest, and SPACs.

We have achieved favorable outcomes at every stage—informal inquiries, advocacy before agency decision-makers, and, of course, at trial.  This is one of the many reasons why securities market participants turn to us when they find themselves in the cross-hairs of federal and state regulators.

We also have a robust compliance and advisory practice, focused on helping our clients stay out of trouble, including with regard to insider trading compliance, cryptocurrencies and digital asset regulation, ESG disclosures, whistleblower compliance, and AML/BSA compliance.  We work with clients to navigate SEC, FINRA, and PCAOB examinations and inspections and provide seasoned advice on how to remediate issues uncovered during examinations, internal inspections, and audits.  Compliance issues often arise unexpectedly and are highly disruptive to a company; here, we are able to apply a softer approach, working with our clients to keep their house clean, never losing sight of the goal of resolving the issues efficiently and preventing them from progressing to an investigation.