Last week, a compliance blog - CompliancEX - had an article on Mary Jo White, the new SEC head. When the title reads "Obama's SEC pick wary of zealous Wall Street Prosecutions", one might have thoughts about this.
The article is short but the two cogent points:
As Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor during the 1990s, Mary Jo White could have sought the corporate equivalent of the death penalty: indicting Prudential Securities Inc. for fraudulently marketing $8 billion in ruinous energy partnerships to small investors
“We persuaded them there was an unacceptably high risk that charging Prudential Securities would lead to significant losses for the innocent shareholders,” said Scott Muller, a New York defense attorney who represented Prudential. “What she avoided was inappropriate collateral damage.”
Ultimately, settlement was $330 million and no criminal charges.
It is the reasoning that shareholders, whose stock was helped by the fraud, were innocent victims that is problematic - to be kind.
Not the bulldog we may be hearing about.