The Securities Enforcement Empirical Database (SEED) tracks and records information for SEC enforcement actions filed against public companies traded on major U.S. exchanges and their subsidiaries.

Created by the NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business in cooperation with Cornerstone Research, SEED facilitates the analysis and reporting of SEC enforcement actions through regular updates of new filings and settlement information for ongoing enforcement actions. The variables tracked include defendant names and types, violations, venues, and resolutions.

“Our goal is to shed light on the SEC’s securities law enforcement decisions.  SEED is the first public database to provide easily searchable and verified data to researchers, counsel, and corporations, as well as regular reports on developments and trends.”
-- Professor Stephen Choi, Co-Director of the Pollack Center for Law & Business.

See color accessible chart. See full text description.

SEC Enforcement Activity: Public Companies and Subsidiaries (November 2024)

Key takeaways from the SEED research report for FY 2024 include:

• New actions against public companies and subsidiaries decreased to 80 actions in FY 2024. This is 12% lower than FY 2023. 
• Issuer Reporting and Disclosure continued to be the most common allegation type in FY 2024, accounting for 41% of actions. This is lower than the 45% share of Issuer Reporting and Disclosure allegations in FY 2023.
• Broker Dealer allegations continued to be the second most common allegation type in SEED, accounting for 29% of FY 2024 actions, higher than the 19% in FY 2023.
• SEC monetary settlements in these actions totaled $1.5 billion, $0.2 billion more than in FY 2023. The median monetary settlement in FY 2024 was $3.2 million, lower than the median of $4.0 million in FY 2023.
• The SEC noted cooperation by 75% of public company and subsidiary defendants in actions settled in FY 2024, the highest level since FY 2019.
• In FY 2024, 34 public company and subsidiary defendants had an admission of guilt, the highest number in a FY in SEED. All of the admissions of guilt were in actions in which defendants admitted to recordkeeping failures.

Prior SEED and Cornerstone Research Reports 

This project is a collaboration between these organizations:

Start a SEED Search

Pollack Center for Law & Business 

For press inquiries about NYU, please contact Michael Orey at Michael.Orey@nyu.edu.

For information about this site, including access for academic scholars, please contact law.seed@nyu.edu.

Cornerstone Research 

For press inquiries about Cornerstone Research, please contact Elisabeth Gaubinger at egaubinger@cornerstone.com.

For information about Cornerstone Research materials on this site, please contact sec_research@cornerstone.com.