SEC names new co-chief of its asset management unit

Previously an associate regional director at the SEC, Catherine Dabney O’Riordan will focus on investigating misconduct by private funds, investment advisors and investment firms.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has named Catherine Dabney O’Riordan co-chief of the division of enforcement’s asset management unit, which specialises in misconduct by private funds, investment advisors and investment companies.

She succeeds Marshall Sprung, who left the SEC in April to join Blackstone Group as global head of compliance. She will serve alongside co-chief Anthony Kelly, who was named to that position in March and will remain based in Los Angeles.

O’Riordan initially joined the SEC in its Los Angeles office in 2005 as a staff attorney in the division of enforcement. She became a member of the asset management unit when it was formed in 2010 and became an assistant director in 2012. She has also been counsel to the director of the division of enforcement and was most recently an associate regional director in the Los Angeles office.

At the SEC, O’Riordan has investigated or supervised cases related to advisers misallocating private fund expenses, including the SEC’s first action in 2014 charging Arizona-based Clean Energy Capital.

She has also supervised investigations involving charges against gatekeepers, including hedge fund advisory firm Alpha Titans.

Earlier in her career, O’Riordan was a litigation associate at Munger Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles for more than four years and a law clerk to David Thompson on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.