On October 17th, 2023, the Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement will host an announcement by CFTC Director of Enforcement, Ian McGinley, followed by a fireside chat with Director McGinley and Jennifer Arlen, at NYU School of Law. Following Director McGinley’s remarks and fireside chat, there will be a moderated panel discussion. Director McGinley will be taking questions from the audience. Pre-registration is required.
This event has been approved for 2 New York State CLE credits in the category of Areas of Professional Practice. The credit is both transitional and non-transitional; it is appropriate for both experienced and newly admitted attorneys.
5:30 - 6:00pm Check-in
6:00 - 8:00pm Remarks by Director McGinley, Fireside Chat, and Panel
8:00 - 8:30pm Reception
Ian McGinley, Director of Enforcement, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Ian McGinley is the Director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Enforcement. In this role, he leads the CFTC’s enforcement program and oversees prosecutions and investigations, the market surveillance unit, the forensic economist unit, and the CFTC’s whistleblower program. He joined the CFTC in February 2023 from the law firm Akin Gump, where he was a partner.
Ian previously served for more than a decade as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he was Co-Chief of the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit, a member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, and Chief of the Narcotics Unit. In his role as Co-Chief of Complex Frauds and Cybercrime, he oversaw a wide variety of matters involving sophisticated financial frauds, cybercrime, cryptocurrency fraud, healthcare fraud, tax fraud, and FCPA violations. Earlier in his career at SDNY, he investigated and prosecuted cases involving insider trading, market manipulation, sanctions violations, and terrorism. He is a recipient of the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award, the Federal Drug Agents Foundation’s True American Hero Award, and was previously named Federal Prosecutor of the Year in 2015 by the Federal Law Enforcement Foundation.
Ian received his J.D. from New York University School of Law. He holds an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School and an M.Sc. with merit from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Ian received his B.A., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University. He clerked for the Honorable Gene E.K. Pratter, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Panelists will include:
Elizabeth Davis, Partner and Co-Chair, Financial Services Practice Group, Davis Wright Tremaine (Former CFTC Chief Trial Attorney)
Liz Davis is the Co-Chair of the Financial Services Practice Group at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, and was the former chair of McGonigle, P.C., prior to its combination with DWT. Liz advises and defends domestic and foreign companies and individuals in civil and criminal investigations, examinations and litigation before the CFTC, DOJ, SEC, NFA and exchanges, as well corporate internal investigations. Previously, Liz was a Chief Trial Attorney at the CFTC where she led regulatory enforcement matters encompassing issues ranging from manipulation, virtual currencies, compliance and trade practice issues. Liz was also a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and litigated numerous civil tax controversy matter in federal district and bankruptcy courts.
James McDonald, Partner, Sullivan & Cromwell (former CFTC Director of Enforcement)
Jamie McDonald is a litigation partner and a member of the Firm’s Securities & Commodities Investigations Practice and its Commodities, Futures and Derivatives group. He has represented entities and individuals across the cryptocurrency ecosystem in government investigations, civil litigation, and regulatory matters.From 2017 to 2020, Mr. McDonald served as Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where he had overall responsibility for all aspects of the CFTC’s enforcement program, including its investigations and litigations, market surveillance, and whistleblower office. During his time at the CFTC, Mr. McDonald was responsible for creating the first task forces within the Division of Enforcement focused on manipulation and spoofing; insider trading; foreign corruption; anti-money laundering and the Bank Secrecy Act; and digital assets. He also coordinated the CFTC’s enforcement activities with the Department of Justice, the SEC, and numerous international regulators. Prior to joining the CFTC in 2017, Mr. McDonald served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he investigated and prosecuted white-collar criminal offenses, as well as cases involving international narcotics trafficking and violent crime, and tried numerous jury cases.
David Meister, Partner, Skadden (former CFTC Director of Enforcement)
Having served twice in federal law enforcement — most recently as Enforcement Director of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and previously as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York — Mr. Meister has more than 30 years of experience litigating enforcement and white collar crime matters from both the prosecution and the defense perspectives. He represents global financial institutions and other corporations and their boards, and individuals, in matters involving the full range of federal, state and international criminal and enforcement agencies. He has conducted numerous jury trials and has led internal investigations throughout his career. Mr. Meister rejoined Skadden in 2014 after serving for nearly three years as director of the CFTC’s Enforcement Division, where he was responsible for the overall direction of the program. Under Mr. Meister’s leadership, the CFTC conducted hundreds of investigations involving physical commodities, futures, swaps and other derivatives, and brought record numbers of enforcement actions with record sanctions. He also led the staff in key Dodd-Frank rulemakings, such as the prohibition against a wide range of manipulative and deceptive conduct and the whistleblower rule. As the leader of CFTC Enforcement, Mr. Meister worked closely with top leadership at the SEC, the DOJ, numerous U.S. attorneys’ offices, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and other federal and state agencies and self-regulatory organizations across the country, as well as the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority and financial market regulators in Europe, Asia and Australia. He also served as co-chair of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Working Group of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which was established by former President Barack Obama in the wake of the financial crisis, and served as a key liaison with congressional oversight committees.
Douglas Yatter, Partner, Latham & Watkins (former CFTC Chief Trial Attorney)
Douglas Yatter, a partner in the New York office of Latham & Watkins, is Global Vice Chair of the firm's White Collar Defense & Investigations Practice. He also serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s Commodities and Derivatives Regulation and Enforcement Practice and is a founding member of Latham’s Global Digital Assets & Web3 Practice. As a former Chief Trial Attorney in the Division of Enforcement of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Mr. Yatter was a leader of two of the agency’s highest profile enforcement matters, including both the ISDAFIX benchmark investigation and the investigation of the collapse of MF Global. He also conducted and supervised various other matters involving violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations, including fraud, manipulation, false reporting, spoofing, trade practice abuses, customer protection, insider trading, and cybersecurity. His work addressed swaps, futures, and other derivatives across various markets, often in coordination with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Futures Association (NFA), and other domestic and international authorities. Mr. Yatter serves on the Advisory Board of NYU School of Law’s Program on Corporate Compliance & Enforcement and the Board of Directors of the Fund for Modern Courts. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a member of the ABA Derivatives & Futures Law Committee and the Futures Industry Association Law & Compliance Division. Early in his career, he clerked for Judge Dennis Jacobs of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Jennifer Arlen (moderator), Norma Z. Paige Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
Jennifer is founder and faculty director of the NYU Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement. Arlen teaches Corporations, Business Crime, and a seminar on Corporate Crime and Financial Misdealing. Arlen served as the president of both the American Law and Economics Association and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (which she co-founded in 2005). She also wrote the principles of corporate and individual enforcement of organizational misconduct for the American Law Institute’s Principles of Law of Compliance and Enforcement for Organizations. She also is on the Editorial Board of the American Law and Economics Review. A prolific scholar, Arlen has edited three books and has published in leading journals including the Rand Journal of Economics; Journal of Law & Economics; Journal of Legal Studies; Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization; Journal of Legal Analysis; Yale Law Journal; Chicago Law Review; NYU Law Review; and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Arlen received her BA in economics from Harvard College (1982, magna cum laude) and her JD (1986, Order of the Coif) and PhD in economics (1992) from New York University. Arlen has been a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, Harvard Law School, and Yale Law School, and was the Ivadelle and Theodore Johnson Professor of Law and Business at USC Gould School of Law before coming to NYU. She clerked for Judge Phyllis Kravitch on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.