George Canellos, who stepped down in January as co-director of the Securities and Exchange Commission'sEnforcement Division, will rejoin the law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in mid-March as global head of the firm's litigation department.

 

Between 2003 and 2009, Canellos was a litigation partner at Milbank; he left in 2009 to serve as director of the SEC's New York Regional office.

 

In 2012, Canellos assumed the role of deputy director of enforcement at the SEC, and afterward served as acting director and co-director of the Enforcement Division. In those positions, he was responsible for overseeing all SEC enforcement activities and supervising approximately 1,300 SEC personnel located in 12 regional offices engaged in investigating, prosecuting and trying civil enforcement cases. 

Canellos led the SEC's New York Regional Office—the largest of the Commission's field offices—from 2009 to 2012, putting him in charge of a staff of some 400 attorneys, accountants, investigators and compliance examiners engaged in enforcement activities and examination of SEC-registered financial institutions in the New York region.  The New York office oversees more than 4,000 financial firms, including many of the nation's leading investment banks, broker-dealers with custody of approximately 80 percent of securities assets in the United States, and investment advisors managing a total of more than $10 trillion of assets.

As director of the New York office, Canellos implemented new approaches in examinations of investment advisors and created a working group focused on investigating bad players in the penny stock industry. Canellos continued his leadership role after assuming top positions in the Enforcement Division, serving under SEC chairs Mary Schapiro, Elisse Walter, and Mary Jo White.

Canellos began his career as a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, where he worked for four years. In 1994, he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.