In 2014, Eric Holder, then the US attorney general, came to NYU Law to discuss policy proposals related to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) investigation and prosecution of illegal financial activities. The following year, then–US deputy attorney general Sally Yates visited the Law School to unveil a new DOJ enforcement policy on individual liability in matters of corporate wrongdoing. In 2022, also at NYU Law, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced changes to the DOJ’s enforcement guidelines regarding corporate charging decisions and resolutions with firms.
The Law School’s Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE) hosted all of these announcements. Since its inception, PCCE has provided a reliable platform for officials—from not only the DOJ but also agencies such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—to make new policies public. At the same time, PCCE has served as a trusted host for off-the-record forums at which policy experts and stakeholders can discuss issues and potential solutions. PCCE gives government officials access to “immediate feedback from an expert audience” that can help inform their approach to policy implementation, says PCCE founder and director Jennifer Arlen ’86, Norma Z. Paige Professor of Law.
Arlen says she launched PCCE in 2014 based on her sense that corporate criminal enforcement policy on the government side and corporate compliance at businesses could both be more effective at deterring corporate crime. Those able to initiate reform wanted to strengthen both sides, she believed. “An academic could do a lot of good,” she recalls thinking, “by bringing together in a safe, off-the-record space leading academics, enforcement officials, compliance officers, general counsel, white collar practitioners, and others to discuss the most important issues relating to how to make corporate criminal enforcement more effective, on the one hand, and corporate compliance more effective, on the other.”
Along with PCCE’s two annual conferences—one dedicated to enforcement policy and the other focused on compliance—it regularly hosts small private roundtables. While some conversations have been public events—such as a gathering in September where Nicole Argentieri, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Criminal Division; Brent Wible, chief counselor in the Criminal Division; and other experts discussed the recently announced Corporate Whistleblower Awards Program—many other PCCE gatherings are off the record, says Arlen.
“The goal is to enable companies and enforcement officials to share what they need to share to help improve things, and that isn’t really possible if everyone speaking is afraid that they might say something that’s taken out of context and lands in a blog or a newspaper,” Arlen says. She adds: “The only way to have a genuine back and forth where people are responding in the moment with new ideas that hadn’t been thoroughly vetted…would be to create a safe place. And that’s been effective.”
PCCE has also sought to promote corporate compliance and effective risk management by hosting a Directors’ Academy. This fall it held its fourth annual Directors’ Academy, a two-day in-person program for board members and C-suite executives of publicly and privately held companies. Attendees heard from CEOs, government officials, scholars, and directors about new and evolving issues related to legal and business risks, cybersecurity, DEI, climate change, developments in government enforcement and corporate governance, shareholder activism, and other topics. Keynote speakers at Directors’ Academies have included a number of prominent figures:
- William Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management
- Gurbir Grewal, the SEC’s director of enforcement
- Todd Gibbons, then-CEO of BNY Mellon
- Erik Gerding, the SEC’s director of corporate finance
- Dan Houston, CEO of Principal Financial
- Heather Lavallee, CEO of Voya Financial
- Peter May, then-president and founding partner of Trian Fund Management
- Marshall Miller, the DOJ’s principal associate deputy attorney general
- Daniel Schulman, then-president and CEO of PayPal
The Directors’ Academy has also allowed Arlen to tap into the expertise of NYU Law faculty and alumni such as Professor Daniel Francis JSD ’20; Robert Jackson Jr., Nathalie P. Urry Professor of Law and a former SEC commissioner; Florencia Marotta-Wurgler ’01, Boxer Family Professor of Law; Edward Rock, Martin Lipton Professor of Law; Kenji Yoshino, Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law; Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence Gerald Rosenfeld; and Adjunct Professor David Katz ’88, a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
PCCE’s influential blog, Compliance & Enforcement, is followed by more than 9,000 subscribers, many of them thought leaders in the field. Edited by Arlen and Joseph Facciponti, PCCE’s executive director, Compliance & Enforcement features posts by experts on subjects such as the application of AI to employee surveys and interviews, the effect of regulatory shifts on the tech sector, and a new emissions disclosure law.
Having had experience as a federal prosecutor, in-house counsel, and law firm attorney, Facciponti was already familiar with PCCE when he became its executive director two years ago. The events he’d attended, he says, “were not just sort of relating the latest information or things that you can get by reading something on the internet, but really convening folks at senior levels to talk policy about pressing issues.”
PCCE’s agenda is an ambitious one, executed by just three people: Arlen, Facciponti, and Carolyn Pautz, PCCE’s director of operations. Their focus, Facciponti says, is on “topics that are developing or becoming more important to both regulators and the private sector.”
One part of that focus, says Facciponti, dovetails with his own background. “I’ve had experience with cybersecurity and data privacy both in the government and in the private sector. And we wanted to push into that area because it was something that was of pressing concern…and we thought there was a way we can make a contribution in that space.” Facciponti spearheaded a daylong conference in November 2023 on cybersecurity and data privacy that gathered government officials, in-house professionals, and academic experts.
Arlen emphasizes that senior officials from both sides of the aisle—for example, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, SEC Chair Jay Clayton, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, and Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski—have trusted PCCE to host their announcements in a neutral setting: “Our ability to convene the leading experts in the field as the audience, and then have a genuinely productive conversation about whatever a government enforcement official is announcing, is really valuable for everybody.”
Posted November 18, 2024