NASD today announced that Barry R. Goldsmith, Executive Vice President for Enforcement, will leave NASD in mid-March to return to private practice.
Goldsmith, 56, has served as NASD's senior enforcement official for nearly 10 years and has been responsible for overseeing the investigation and prosecution of disciplinary actions at the national and district levels.
Goldsmith will become a partner in the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP's Washington, D.C. office. Senior Vice President and Deputy Head of Enforcement James Shorris has been named Acting Head of Enforcement.
"Investor confidence has been badly shaken by a series of scandals in the recent past, and a major key to rebuilding and maintaining investor confidence has been vigorous enforcement of our securities laws and regulations," said NASD Chairman and CEO Robert R. Glauber. "Barry Goldsmith and his department have demonstrated to investors over and over again that there is a tough and tireless cop on the securities beat. We at NASD thank him for his enormous contribution, and we wish him every success in his new endeavors."
"Barry has a well-deserved reputation for excellence. He has built an extremely effective and efficient enforcement operation that rivals any in the regulatory arena, and he has infused it with a culture of integrity, tough-mindedness and fairness," said NASD Vice Chairman Mary Schapiro. "Investors, the securities industry and NASD are very much in his debt."
"During my tenure at NASD, I have been privileged to work side-by-side with the most talented and dedicated group of professionals I have ever known. I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished together in the enforcement arena," Goldsmith said. "Investors and those who rely upon the integrity of our capital markets have my colleagues to thank for confronting the difficult enforcement issues we faced with unified purpose, integrity and fairness."
Goldsmith spearheaded NASD's investigations in a number of precedent-setting areas, including its probes of IPO allocation practices by major securities dealers, research analyst conflicts of interest, arbitration abuses, boiler room fraud, mutual fund share class sales practice abuses, hedge fund marketing practices and sales of variable annuities and variable life products by retail brokerage firms. Under his direction, the number of enforcement department staff more than doubled to 216 attorneys, investigators, technologists and administrative personnel. The number of new enforcement actions filed each year reached record numbers, growing from 975 in 1995 to 1,399 in 2005. As the quality and significance of individual enforcement cases grew, disciplinary fines collected rose from $5.3 million in 1995 to $127.5 million in 2005.
Before joining NASD in 1996, Goldsmith served as Chief Litigation Counsel for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where he was responsible for the conduct, supervision, and evaluation of all enforcement litigation conducted by the agency. Among the matters for which he had significant responsibilities were the SEC's landmark federal court cases against Drexel Burnham Lambert and Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and Victor Posner.
In 1994, he was the recipient of the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award, the highest award given to senior executives in the federal government. Prior to joining the SEC's Division of Enforcement in 1986, he was a litigation partner in a Washington, DC law firm. Goldsmith began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Thomas R. McMillen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Goldsmith graduated magna cum laude in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.