After serving the top U.S. financial market regulator for almost half a century, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Catherine McGuire, Counsel in the Division of Trading and Markets, is retiring after 44 years at the SEC.

McGuire has received more than a dozen awards for her service, including the Distinguished Service Award, the SEC’s highest award, in 1992, and the Presidential Meritorious Executive Award, in 2000.  She began her SEC career in 1973 in what was then the Division of Market Regulation and was promoted to positions of increasing responsibility, including serving as Counsel to Commissioner Bevis Longstreth from 1982 to 1983.  She was named Chief Counsel and Associate Director of the division in 1993 and has advised the division as Counsel since 2008.

“Catherine McGuire has been an outstanding advocate for investors and a guardian of safe and efficient markets throughout her career at the Commission,” said Division of Trading and Markets Acting Director Heather Seidel.  “She has been dedicated to the Commission’s mission to protect investors, maintain fair and orderly markets, and facilitate capital formation, and her continuing legacy is a talented and committed division staff, many of whom she mentored, supported, and advised.”

McGuire said: “I am grateful to have spent my legal career at the Commission.  I am extremely proud of the work by the Division of Trading and Markets and the dedication of its staff.  Their commitment to the agency’s mission is inspiring and represents the best of government service.  It has been a privilege to work with them on behalf of investors.”

McGuire’s numerous and significant contributions include work to implement the Securities Reform Act of 1975, the Securities Exchange Act Amendments of 1983, the Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act, the Market Reform Act, the Government Securities Act, the National Securities Markets Improvements Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.   She also worked on rules involving trade confirmations, regulation of municipal securities and government securities dealers, municipal securities disclosure, retail sales practices, securities arbitration, anti-money laundering, options, and derivatives.