SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro has tapped Meredith Cross, a corporate partner in the D.C. office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, as director of the commission’s division of corporation finance, the SEC announced earlier today.
Cross, who has practiced at Wilmer since 1998, says once she was offered the job, “it was an instant yes,” though she adds that it will be tough to leave her colleagues at the firm. Cross says she is still wrapping up her work at Wilmer and has not decided on a start date at the SEC.
She held a number of positions in the corporation finance division in the 1990s. Immediately before joining Wilmer, she was deputy director of the division, which is responsible for ensuring that public companies appropriately disclose information to investors.
Cross says she had not planned on going back into government service, but that eventually changed. “When Chairman Schapiro was appointed, that’s the first time I thought, well, that would be wonderful,” she says. Cross previously served at the SEC when Schapiro was a commissioner and says she has periodically crossed paths with Schapiro since then.
In a statement, Schapiro said Cross will be “instrumental” in considering issues such as “shareholders’ access to the proxy to nominate directors, and ways to improve the overall quality and clarity of disclosure provided to investors.”
According to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, Cross donated $2,300 to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign. She will replace Shelley Parratt, who was named acting director of corporation finance in January after former director John White left the commission.
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