Wayne M. Aaron is a partner in the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. Mr. Aaron is a member of the firm's Litigation & Arbitration Group and the Financial Services Regulatory practice.
Mr. Aaron regularly advises securities firms and their employees on complex sales and trading and other regulatory issues affecting the securities markets and represents these clients in inquiries by and enforcement proceedings before the Securities and Exchange Commission and other government regulators and self-regulatory organizations. His practice encompasses the wide-range of regulatory issues currently affecting financial services firms, hedge funds, and other institutional investors including, equity and fixed-income trading practices; market structure and order handling and execution issues; audit trail and trade reporting requirements; commission sharing arrangements and directed brokerage programs; short sales and operational compliance; high-frequency trading, market-making, and specialist obligations; capital markets issues; and research practices. In addition to providing ongoing regulatory counseling, Mr. Aaron represents clients in responding to regulatory inquiries including defending witnesses and their firms during on-the-record testimony and enforcement proceedings brought by the SEC, FINRA, and other state and federal regulatory agencies. Currently, Mr. Aaron is representing a number of the country’s leading broker-dealers and their associated persons in significant private and public regulatory investigations by the SEC staff and the enforcement and market surveillance departments of the major self-regulatory organizations.
Mr. Aaron frequently lectures on broker-dealer and investment adviser regulatory and trading issues. In addition to numerous compliance and training sessions for the trading desks and business units of various top-tier broker-dealers, Mr. Aaron speaks at various industry conferences. Mr. Aaron has been recognized as a leading lawyer for financial services regulation in Chambers USA.
