Annette Nazareth

Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell, LLP

Biography

Annette Nazareth is head of Davis Polk’s Washington DC office and leads the Trading and Markets practice within the firm’s Financial Institutions Group. She regularly advises clients on a broad range of financial regulatory, legislative, governance and enforcement matters relating to securities, derivatives and futures.  She also advises financial institutions and corporations on regulatory considerations for digital asset and blockchain businesses as well as on cybersecurity issues.

Prior to rejoining Davis Polk in 2008, Annette was a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Director of the Commission’s Division of Trading and Markets.  She has been a key player in financial services regulation for much of her career. Annette was a highly regarded financial services policymaker for more than a decade.  During her tenure at the Commission, Annette worked on numerous groundbreaking initiatives, including execution quality disclosure rules, implementation of equities decimal pricing, short sale reforms and modernization of the national market system rules. Annette also served as the Commission’s representative on the Financial Stability Forum from 1999 to 2008. Earlier in her career, she was an associate at Davis Polk and held senior legal positions at several investment banks.

Since leaving the Commission in January 2008, Annette has served as Rapporteur for the Group of Thirty’s report, The Structure of Financial Supervision: Approaches and Challenges in a Global Marketplace and as Project Director for their report, Enhancing Financial Stability and Resilience: Macroprudential Policy, Tools and Systems for the Future. She is also the contributing editor of Getting the Deal Through–Financial Services Compliance 2018.

Annette holds a JD from Columbia University School of Law and an AB in history and economics from Brown University.