As in previous years, the report focuses on rooting out misconduct that can do significant harm to investors and United States markets. Five core principles guide the Division’s actions:

• focusing on the Main Street investor
• focusing on individual accountability
• keeping pace with technological change
• imposing remedies that further enforcement goals in an effective way
• constantly assessing the allocation of resources

To those ends, the SEC brought a diverse mix of 862 enforcement actions in 2019, 526 of which being standalone actions. The actions encompassed a broad range of issues, including issuer disclosure/accounting violations, auditor misconduct, investment advisory issues, securities offerings, market manipulation, insider trading, and broker-dealer misconduct. $4.3 billion in disgorgement and penalties was obtained by the SEC through judgments and orders. Roughly $1.2 billion of that amount was returned to harmed investors.

The entirety of the 2019 report can be read here.

Sources:

SEC Division of Enforcement Publishes Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2019 (www.sec.gov)

Enforcement Division Annual Report - FY19 (www.sec.gov)