Today the SEC Division of Enforcement released its 2019 Annual Report for the fiscal year ended this past September. The recap shows that enforcement actions against Investment Advisers and Investment Companies increased by a whopping 77% – accounting for over one third of all SEC enforcement actions and leading the other categories of enforcement including securities offerings and issuer reporting. This is relative to the overall increase in enforcement actions of 7%, despite its month-long hiatus. The Division brought a total of 526 stand-alone cases in fiscal 2019, versus 490 in 2018. Follow-on cases held steady at 210. Pursuing an agenda of personal responsibility, the Division also obtained 595 industry bars and suspensions.

The overall rate of disgorgement was up 10% at $4,349 million for 2019. The top five percent of actions represented 70% of that amount while the remaining actions amounted to $1,286 million. That amount yields an average of more than $2.5 million per enforcement action, an average increase of 37% per action outside the top 5% cases.

The release can be found here.