BNA's Securities Law Daily reported yesterday in this article (subscription required) that the SEC recently provided some interesting statistics on the cases brought by the Division of Enforcement in fiscal year 2003. Linda Chatman Thomsen, Deputy Director of the Division of Enforcement, reportedly made the comments at the Dec. 5, 2003 annual meeting of the ABA's Federal Regulation of Securities Committee.

According to the article, Ms. Thomsen stated that:

--In FY 2003, the SEC brought 679 enforcement actions (as compared to 598 cases in FY 2002 and 484 cases in FY 2001).

--199 cases were in the financial fraud and issuer-reporting area. She observed that the percentage of issuer-reporting cases has been going up steadily over the last five years or so and that such cases first exceeded 100 in number in 2000.

--109 cases were in the offering-fraud area, down from 119 in FY 2002.

--137 cases were in the broker-dealer litigation area, up from 82 in FY 2002.

--50 insider trading cases, down from 59 in FY 2002.

--63 cases involved investment advisers.

Thomsen also noted that the Division of Enforcement brought many more officer and director bars last year than in the past. She commented that these cases were under the more stringent, pre-Sarbanes-Oxley standard (discussed here in greater detail).