Robert E. Rice, a partner in Clifford Chance's Litigation & Dispute Resolution practice, has 25 years of white-collar experience in Government and the private sector. Over the course of his career, Bob, a seasoned trial and appellate lawyer, has been at the forefront of many high-stakes regulatory enforcement matters and criminal prosecutions. Bob represents financial institutions, asset management firms, public companies and individual clients in regulatory and criminal matters as well as in parallel civil litigation and internal investigations. Before joining Clifford Chance, Bob's prior roles included serving as Chief Counsel to United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, as Head of the Litigation and Regulatory Investigations Practice Group at a major global financial institution, and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
As Chief Counsel to SEC Chair White from 2013 to 2015, Bob provided advice and counsel on a broad range of regulatory matters across the SEC’s divisions and offices, focusing on enforcement actions, policy and strategy; compliance examinations and inspections of broker-dealers, investment advisers and other SEC registrants; and cross-border coordination with regulatory agencies around the world. Before his time at the SEC, Bob was, from 2004 to 2013, a Managing Director and senior in-house lawyer at a global financial institution. While there, he led a team of in-house lawyers in developing and implementing strategies to manage legal and reputational risk associated with a global docket of complex regulatory investigations and enforcement actions, criminal investigations and prosecutions, litigation and corporate governance matters. Bob also served for almost a decade as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, ultimately becoming a Deputy Chief of its Criminal Division. During his tenure in that office, Bob investigated and prosecuted a broad range of federal crimes, including bank fraud, money laundering, public corruption, RICO and securities fraud.
