C. Dabney O’Riordan Named as Co-Chief of the Asset Management Unit

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that C. Dabney O’Riordan has been named co-chief of the Division of Enforcement’s Asset Management Unit, a national specialized unit that focuses on misconduct by investment advisers, investment companies, and private funds. She joins Anthony Kelly as co-chief of the unit and succeeds Marshall Sprung, who left the agency in April.

Ms. O’Riordan has investigated or supervised a number of significant enforcement cases addressing a wide variety of misconduct across the asset management industry and that touch on many of the unit’s priority areas. These matters include advisers who misallocated private fund expenses, including the SEC’s first action charging a private equity fund manager for misallocating expenses between the manager and the private funds and a similar action against a hedge fund adviser, as well as actions against advisers for misallocating trades to its client’s detriment and stealing client assets. In addition, Ms. O’Riordan has supervised investigations involving charges against gatekeepers, including an auditor to a private fund, an accounting firm hired to conduct custody examinations and a brokerage firm that ignored red flags that an adviser was misappropriating client assets.

“Dabney’s excellent judgment, deep knowledge of the laws and rules governing the asset management industry, and strong leadership skills position her perfectly to co-lead the nationwide Asset Management Unit,” said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. “I am confident that she and her co-chief, Anthony, will be great partners in the unit’s mission and the SEC’s efforts to root out misconduct in the asset management industry.”

“I am honored to lead the Asset Management Unit with Anthony,” said Ms. O’Riordan.  “As someone who joined the unit at its inception, I have seen the talent and dedication of the unit’s staff in policing a vital industry that investors have entrusted with trillions of dollars in assets, and I look forward to continuing to build on the unit’s many successes.”

Ms. O’Riordan is currently an Associate Regional Director in the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office. She began working in the Los Angeles office in 2005 as a staff attorney in the Division of Enforcement and joined the Asset Management Unit when it was formed in 2010. Ms. O’Riordan also served as counsel to the Director of the Division of Enforcement, and became an Assistant Director in the unit in 2012. Before joining the SEC, Ms. O’Riordan worked as a litigation associate for over four years at Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles and served as a law clerk to the Honorable David R. Thompson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Ms. O’Riordan received her law degree from UCLA School of Law where she was Order of the Coif and her undergraduate degree with honors from Wellesley College.