The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is bidding farewell to one of its most senior rulemakers.

The SEC has announced that Alan Beller, director of its Division of Corporation Finance and senior counselor to the commission, will leave the SEC to return to the private sector. Under Beller’s leadership, the division produced the fastest-paced and most far-reaching corporate governance, financial disclosure and securities offering reforms in commission history, it noted.

Beller, 56, who assumed his current positions in January 2002, will remain at the commission until February to assist with ongoing and transition matters.

“Alan has made enormous contributions to the SEC’s mission of investor protection over the last four years. He has led the most prodigious and substantial activity in the division’s and the commission’s history, including the rulemaking effort to implement the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002,” noted SEC chair, Christopher Cox. “His talents and experience cover the spectrum of the commission’s responsibilities, and his role at the SEC has consequently extended well beyond the Division of Corporation Finance. I particularly appreciate the role he has played as advisor to the chairman on important regulatory issues across the board. He not only has been a leading figure in this very significant time in the commission’s history, but he also will be recognized as one of the giants of the SEC of all time.”

As well as implementing the SOX reforms, the division under Beller also drafted rules that produced the most significant reforms in decades to the securities offering process. He also led the rulemaking effort that produced the first comprehensive rules for registration and disclosure for the asset-backed securities market. And, he led the Division’s efforts to draft rules adopted by the commission that accelerated filings of periodic reports and implemented for the first time a real-time current disclosure system for material events.

Under Beller’s leadership the division also substantially revamped its procedures for selecting filings for review and allocating its review resources to focus on larger companies that represent the vast majority of investment dollars, periodic reports available to trading markets where most investment decisions are made, and financial disclosure that generally contains the most important information for investors.

The SEC adds that Beller was also instrumental in last year’s establishment of the commission’s Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies, which is charged with making recommendations to the commission regarding improved regulation of smaller companies. The Advisory Committee’s final report is due in the spring.