The director of the Securities Division for the Utah Department of Commerce has resigned for a job in New York.
Tony Taggart's resignation will be effective Friday. He will become executive director in Morgan Stanley's Law Division, where he will serve as a senior-level attorney handling the firm's state regulatory matters.
"I have thoroughly enjoyed serving the citizens of Utah as their securities regulator," Taggart said. "During my tenure, we have worked hard to balance interests. We have protected investors by aggressively pursuing violators of the securities laws while striving to streamline and relieve the burdens on legitimate businesses."
Taggart's successor will not be appointed until early next year, according to Klare Bachman, the department's executive director. The department's deputy director, Jason Perry, will act as the division's interim director.
With Taggart at the helm, the division brought a record number of administrative and criminal actions against white-collar criminals and other violators.
It also was involved in several regulatory issues that gained national attention. In 2002, as part of a national task force investigating securities analysts' conflicts of interest, the division was selected to investigate conflicts at Goldman Sachs & Co. that culminated in a global settlement in which 10 of Wall Street's largest firms were sanctioned and fined $1.4 billion.
"Tony will be missed in Utah," Bachman said.
Before becoming the division's director, Taggart was its director of corporate finance from 1994 to 1998 and legal counsel from 1993 to 1994. He has served as Utah's member representative of the North American Securities Administrators Association and served on its board of directors from 2003 to 2004 and as corporate finance section chair from 2001 to 2003. He also served on the Board of Trustees of the Utah Council on Economic Education from 1998 to 2004.
E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com