George Curtis Goes to Washington

In a development generating quite a buzz here in Denver, George Curtis, head of the Denver Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has been appointed to replace Walter Ricciardi as the Deputy Director of the Division of Enforcement.  Curtis took over the Denver regional office in October 2006, exiting the law firm Gibson Dunn (where he had been a partner since 1984).  As the press release put out by the SEC described:

• Mr. Curtis is currently the Regional Director of the SEC’s Denver Regional Office. He joined the Commission’s staff in 2006 after 30 years in private practice. He received his B.A. degree from Fordham University in 1970, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Virginia in 1971 and 1973 respectively, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1976. Under Mr. Curtis’s leadership, the Denver office brought 49 Commission-approved enforcement actions during the past year that addressed particularly complex, Commission-wide concerns. In one notable case, the SEC charged a registered representative in Albuquerque, N.M., for paying secret cash kickbacks to the former State Treasurer of New Mexico in exchange for obtaining municipal bond securities transactions with the New Mexico State Treasurer’s Office.