The point man for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) dealings with other regulators around the world, Ethiopis Tafara, is stepping down, the commission said Friday.
The SEC said that Tafara, director of the SEC’s office of international affairs (OIA), will leave the agency at the end of next month. Dr. Robert Fisher, a deputy director in OIA, will become acting director upon Tafara’s departure.
Tafara has led the OIA, which advises the commission on cross-border enforcement and regulatory issues and engages in regulatory dialogues with authorities outside the U.S., for the past 10 years. He also represented the SEC at global regulatory organizations, such as the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB).
“Cross-border cooperation has become essential to the SEC’s work in protecting investors and facilitating capital-raising in the U.S. and across the globe,” noted Tafara.
Fisher joined the SEC staff in 2002 as a financial economist in the Office of Economic Analysis, and he later became an assistant director in the OIA, where he was primarily responsible for the SEC’s international technical assistance program for emerging and recently-emerged markets.