Peter Bresnan Named Associate Director of the Division of Enforcement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2004-56

Washington, D.C., April 26, 2004 - The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced the appointment of Peter H. Bresnan as an Associate Director in the Division of Enforcement. As Associate Director, Mr. Bresnan will serve as a senior official in the Division of Enforcement and will assist in planning and directing the Commission's investigations and other enforcement efforts.

Since November 2001, Mr. Bresnan has served as the Deputy Chief Litigation Counsel of the Commission's Division of Enforcement. In that role, he assisted in managing the Commission's nationwide litigation program. From November 2003 to April 2004, Mr. Bresnan has also served as acting District Administrator in the SEC's Boston District Office.

Stephen M. Cutler, the SEC's Director of Enforcement said, "Peter Bresnan is an outstanding lawyer and thinker. He has earned the respect and confidence of everyone with whom he has worked. We are fortunate that Peter will continue to contribute his extraordinary talents to the Commission's enforcement program."

Mr. Bresnan, who joined the Commission in April 1995 as Assistant Chief Litigation Counsel, has prosecuted a number of ground-breaking cases for the Commission. Mr. Bresnan was the Commission's lead trial counsel in the WorldCom case in which the Commission obtained the largest civil penalty ever levied for a violation of the federal securities laws. During his tenure as the interim head of the SEC's Boston office, Mr. Bresnan spearheaded the Commission's market timing cases against Putnam, Massachusetts Financial Services Company (MFS), and two subsidiaries of FleetBoston, in which the SEC recovered a total of $420 million on behalf of injured investors. Earlier, he successfully resolved the Commission's first litigated yield-burning case and litigated the Commission's first fraud case against an offshore hedge fund, Manhattan Investment Fund Ltd., and its manager Michael Berger, involving an alleged $393 million in investor losses.

Prior to joining the Commission, Mr. Bresnan was a litigator at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. Mr. Bresnan, 49, earned his undergraduate degree in history from Kenyon College and his law degree from Fordham University Law School.