Joseph C. Lombard

Mr. Lombard advises exchanges, clearing agencies, trading and advisory firms and related individuals regarding trading and markets regulation, and represents those clients in regulatory inquiries conducted by the SEC, FINRA and other SROs.  His regulatory counselling often involves proposals to the SEC to establish new trading and clearing systems and processes and related requests for exemptions and no action relief.  His defense of clients in government and SRO investigations focuses on equity and options market structure issues, consolidated and proprietary market data, and other complex trading-related issues. He brings to the firm more than twenty years of business, legal, policy and regulatory experience.  He served as the chief executive of a groundbreaking exchange-affiliated brokerage firm, a market structure adviser to SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, an enforcement defense attorney at a leading global law firm.  He began his legal career as an attorney in the SEC Division of Enforcement attorney.

Mr. Lombard was a member of the executive team at Archipelago Holdings, where he was President of Wave Securities, the company’s institutional electronic brokerage subsidiary, from 2001 to 2006. He also held the senior executive position at the company’s U.K and Canadian subsidiaries. He was a key participant in the sale of Wave to Merrill Lynch in early 2006, the time of the closing of the historic NYSE/Archipelago merger.  From 2006 to 2007, Mr. Lombard served as Managing Director in the Global Equities division of Merrill Lynch, reporting to the head of Global Cash Equity Trading.

Prior to his tenure at Archipelago, Mr. Lombard was Senior Counsel for Market Regulation to SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt from 1999 to 2001. He advised Chairman Levitt on all matters relating to equity and options market structure during that time, with a particular focus on policy and legal issues relating to electronic markets.

From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Lombard practiced law at the Washington, D.C. office of O’Melveny & Myers, counseling broker-dealer and investment advisor clients and representing them in regulatory and enforcement inquiries. During that time, he was also Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching a masters level course on the enforcement of the federal securities laws. Mr. Lombard began his legal career in 1990 as a staff attorney in the Division of Enforcement of the SEC.