Washington, D.C.
Daniel Nathan uses his deep enforcement and regulatory experience to represent U.S. and international financial institutions and individuals before financial regulators.
With a combined 25 years as a senior enforcement official with the SEC, CFTC and FINRA, three of the country’s leading regulatory and enforcement authorities, Dan is a particularly effective advocate for those facing investigations and/or enforcement action by those regulators. He is also active in advising and representing companies who issue or transact in cryptocurrency and is co-chair of Orrick's Blockchain and Cryptocurrency group.
Daniel’s intimate knowledge of broker-dealer regulation provides clients facing SEC or FINRA examinations and enforcement investigations with experienced counsel related to broker-dealer supervisory procedures, sales practices, anti-money laundering, ETF regulation, product disclosure and supervision, and securities and broker registration. His extensive experience includes the JOBS Act and Dodd-Frank Act, and he has led extensive efforts to help foreign banks establish programs for complying with the Volcker Rule. He also represents individuals and entities facing investigations by the CFTC or derivatives exchanges.
Previously, Daniel served as the Vice President and Regional Enforcement Director of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), where he oversaw 70 lawyers across 15 offices responsible for bringing up to 900 disciplinary actions annually against broker-dealer firms, registered representatives and associated persons. This included many of FINRA’s most significant nationwide enforcement actions, including actions and sweeps involving mutual fund breakpoints, structured products sales practices and supervision, and private placement due diligence and disclosure.
In his 12 years at the SEC, Daniel served as Assistant Director in the Division of Enforcement, where he supervised federal securities investigations of insider trading (including the investigation that resulted in the seminal case US v. O’Hagan), market manipulation, financial fraud and accounting misconduct. In nine years with the CFTC, he served as Deputy Director of Enforcement, with responsibility for oversight of the agency’s Enforcement Division. In that role, he supervised significant actions regarding market manipulation, trade practices, commodity trading advisor practices and foreign exchange dealer practices.
An oft-quoted authority on complex financial, legal and business issues, Daniel is frequently sought after to speak and write on the important issues confronting financial institutions, including broker-dealer sales practices and compliance, complex products, ETFs, the Volcker Rule, derivatives, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, and anti-money laundering. He is Co-chair of the ABA SEC Enforcement Subcommittee and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Investment Compliance.
