The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that Erik Sirri, Director of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets, plans to leave the agency at the end of April to return to academia.

Since coming to the SEC in September 2006, Sirri has overseen the Commission’s programs related to securities exchanges, brokers, dealers, clearing agencies, transfer agents, and credit rating agencies. He also worked closely with the financial agencies of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets both on policy issues and in coordinating responses to the recent market crisis.

As director, Sirri led numerous regulatory and policy initiatives, including those related to the Commission’s new authority over credit ratings agencies and the recent establishment of oversight of counterparties’ credit default swaps. Sirri also oversaw implementation of disclosure rules for municipal securities and the Commission’s broker financials responsibility rules for brokers, as well as rules related to share delivery requirements under Regulation SHO.

Before joining the SEC, Sirri was a finance professor at Harvard Business School and Babson College. He had served as chief economist of the SEC from 1996 to 1999.