CFA Counsel Hauptman Joins SEC Commissioner Crenshaw's Office

A vocal critic of the agency's Regulation Best Interest, Hauptman's main focuses at the Federation were a fiduciary standard for investment professionals, adequate funding for financial market regulators, credit rating agency regulation, investor arbitration and financial market structure.

Hauptman recently joined Roper in criticizing the Labor Department's fiduciary prohibited transaction exemption to align with Reg BI, stating that Labor was wrong to reinstate the 1975 regulatory definition of fiduciary investment advice and its five-part test under the plan as it "is easily gamed by financial firms that like to market themselves as trusted advisers while avoiding any fiduciary obligations to their clients."

By reinstating "that deeply flawed definition, the Department is ensuring that these firms, as well as their employees and agents, will only be investment advice fiduciaries when they choose to be," Hauptman and Roper explained.

Prior to joining the consumer group in January 2014, Hauptman worked on a broad range of banking and tax issues at Public Citizen.

Prior to joining Public Citizen in 2011, he was a prosecutor for the Los Angeles city attorney's office. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2005, magna cum laude, and from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, in 2009, with distinction. He is a member of the State Bar of California.