George Canellos > Milbank > New York, United States > Lawyer Profile

George Canellos

Position

Partner, Litigation & Arbitration

Career

Mr. Canellos represents financial institutions, public companies, asset management firms, and individuals in government investigations and contested litigation in federal and state courts and advises clients on corporate governance and compliance with the securities and banking laws. Mr. Canellos has received national recognition and many awards for his achievements in litigation and capital markets enforcement. Praised by Chambers USA as “a tremendously talented lawyer” and “very cogent thinker” who is able to “handle difficult situations in a very calming matter,” Mr. Canellos has more than two decades of experience prosecuting and defending white collar criminal cases and civil actions arising under the securities laws, having served twice in federal law enforcement — most recently in top positions at the US Securities and Exchange Commission and earlier in his career as a federal criminal prosecutor in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In March 2014, Mr. Canellos rejoined Milbank, where he was a partner from 2003 to 2009.

In his four and a half years at the SEC, Mr. Canellos served most recently as co-director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement and before that, as the Enforcement Division’s acting director and deputy director. In those positions, Mr. Canellos set SEC enforcement priorities and policies, and supervised the civil law enforcement efforts —including in investigations, prosecutions, and trials — of approximately 1,300 SEC personnel in 12 offices across the country. From July 2009 until May 2012, Mr. Canellos served as director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office, overseeing approximately 400 professional staff of enforcement attorneys, accountants, investigators and compliance examiners responsible for enforcement investigations and actions, and compliance inspections of New York-based investment banks, investment advisers, broker-dealers, mutual funds and hedge funds.

While at the SEC, Mr. Canellos supervised many of the landmark enforcement cases in recent years, including the insider trading actions against Raj Rajaratnam, many individuals associated with Galleon Management LP, and hedge fund managers associated with S.A.C. Capital; the first-ever action against the operator of a “dark pool” trading platform; actions against participants in the structuring of collateralized debt obligations and the securitization of mortgage loans; and actions concerning and clarifying the responsibilities of participants in the investment advisory and mutual fund industries. In these and other cases, he worked closely with top leadership of the US Department of Justice, FINRA, CFTC, State Attorneys’ General, and the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, and financial markets regulators in Europe and Asia.

At Milbank, he has advised many of the nation’s leading broker-dealers, investment advisory firms, and mutual fund companies on compliance with the securities laws and the rules of self-regulatory organizations. He led the defense of clients in many of the recent headline investigations of the financial industry, including investigations of a wide variety of accounting practices; revenue-sharing and market-timing practices of mutual funds; soft-dollar and directed brokerage practices of investment advisors and broker-dealers; specialist trading on the New York Stock Exchange; revenue-sharing practices of insurance carriers and brokers; the promotion of tax shelters and strategies by securities and accounting firms, and trading and financial transactions implicating US sanctions laws.