Laura Magyar
Managing Director
Ms. Magyar advises clients on all aspects of their activities in the financial markets across products and jurisdictions. She has over twenty-eight years of regulatory and financial markets experience and currently serves as a compliance consultant in settlements involving the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, and banking matters. She assesses and provides expert advice on firm compliance with regulatory expectations and best practices across jurisdictions including compliance with trade and communication surveillance obligations, supervisory/governance framework requirements, off-channel communication and recordkeeping requirements, swaps regulatory obligations, and anti-money laundering and know your customer requirements.
Earlier in her career, she served as a branch chief in the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations for fifteen years, where she oversaw inspections of broker-dealers and investment advisers for compliance with SEC and FINRA rules and regulations. She led teams conducting analyses of firms’ processes and policies for regulatory compliance (through monitoring and testing of controls), conducted legal analyses of firms’ adherence to obligations, and conducted risk-targeted examinations to inform policy.
Ms. Magyar worked on matters touching on many of the SEC’s examination program’s priorities, including sales practices, trade surveillance, best execution, Regulation SHO, foreign-domiciled U.S.-registered broker-dealers, and anti-money laundering compliance, among other high-profile issues. During her tenure at the SEC, Ms. Magyar was seconded to the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, where she investigated potential rigging of foreign-exchange benchmarks, supervised U.K. affiliates of U.S. banks, and served as a liaison with the SEC.
Previously, she worked at Promontory Financial Group on securities markets issues. Prior to joining the SEC, Ms. Magyar spent several years in the private sector. She served as an associate at Bellows and Bellows, P.C. in Chicago, where she represented several broker-dealers and registered representatives in regulatory matters involving the National Association of Securities Dealers. She gained firsthand experience of the financial industry while working for seven years at Merrill Lynch, Pierce Fenner & Smith, Inc., and Howe Barnes Investments, Inc.
Ms. Magyar received her J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law and her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University.
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