Steven Peikin is an American lawyer. On June 8, 2017 he was appointed as co-director of the

Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

(SEC) Enforcement Division, a title he shares with Stephanie Avakian.

Career

From 1996 to 2004, Peikin served as an

assistant U.S. attorney An assistant United States attorney (AUSA) is an official career civil service position in the U.S. Department of Justice composed of lawyers working under the U.S. attorney of each U.S. federal judicial district. They represent the federal gov ...

, overseeing the securities and commodities task force for the

Southern District of New York The Southern District of New York is a federal judicial district that encompasses the counties of New York (Manhattan), Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Sullivan. Federal offices or agencies operating in the distri ...

. The group pursues crimes including accounting fraud, insider trading and

market manipulation In economics and finance, market manipulation occurs when someone intentionally alters the supply or demand of a security to influence its price. This can involve spreading misleading information, executing misleading trades, or manipulating ...

. Among his clients in private practice at Sullivan & Cromwell, Mr. Peikin has helped represent

Barclays Barclays PLC (, occasionally ) is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services ...

against accusations of sanctions violations,

LIBOR The London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (Libor ) was an interest rate average calculated from estimates submitted by the leading Bank, banks in London. Each bank estimated what it would be charged were it to borrow from other banks. It was the prim ...

manipulation and

insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider informati ...

and

Goldman Sachs Group The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many international ...

, during a

U.S. Senate The United States Senate is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and House have the authority under Article One of the ...

investigation of its trading and warehousing of

aluminum Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

and other commodities. In 2015, he represented Michael Coscia, a high-frequency trader convicted of " spoofing," in the first-of-its-kind prosecution by the government. The SEC's ethics rules bar Peikin from supervising any cases that affect Goldman or other clients of Sullivan & Cromwell for one year. As co-chair of the division, he has cited

cybercrime Cybercrime encompasses a wide range of criminal activities that are carried out using digital devices and/or Computer network, networks. It has been variously defined as "a crime committed on a computer network, especially the Internet"; Cyberc ...

as one of the biggest threats to the financial markets and an enforcement priority of the agency..

References

American lawyers Living people Sullivan & Cromwell partners Yale University alumni Harvard Law School alumni Year of birth missing (living people) U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission personnel {{US-law-bio-stub