Kirkland & Ellis LLP announced today that former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami has joined the firm as a partner in the global Government, Regulatory and Internal Investigations Practice Group. Khuzami, who led the SEC’s Enforcement Division for four years, will be based in Washington, D.C. and New York.
During Khuzami’s tenure at the SEC, the Enforcement Division filed its highest rate of cases, in fiscal years 2011 and 2012. He created nationwide prosecution units to concentrate on the high-priority areas of investment advisers and private funds, large-scale trading and market abuse, mortgage and other structured products, bribery of foreign officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), and municipal securities and public pensions.
Senior SEC official Kenneth Lench will also join Kirkland as a partner in the global Government, Regulatory and Internal Investigations practice. Lench, who will leave the agency at the end of July, has headed the Structured and New Products Unit within the SEC Enforcement Division since January 2010 and will be based in Washington, D.C.
Lench spent 23 years at the SEC, where he most recently was Chief of the Structured and New Products Unit. That unit created by Khuzami in 2010 as a specialty group of more than 45 professionals nationwide focusing on abuses in markets for complex securities, including asset-backed securities and derivatives.
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