Paul S. Atkins is CEO of Patomak Global Partners LLC, which provides consulting services regarding financial services industry matters, including regulatory compliance, risk and crisis management, public affairs, independent reviews, litigation support, and strategy. He also serves as an independent director and non-executive chairman of the board of BATS Global Markets, Inc., a leading operator of electronic U.S. and European securities markets trading listed cash equity securities and equity options.

Early life and education

Originally from

Lillington, North Carolina Lillington is a town in Harnett County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 3,194 at the 2010 census, and was estimated in 2018 to be 3,604. It is the county seat of Harnett County. Lillington is a part of the Dunn Micropolitan Area ...

, Atkins grew up in

Tampa, Florida Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and ...

. He received his A.B. from

Wofford College Wofford College is a private liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was founded in 1854. The campus is a national arboretum and one of the few four-year institutions in the southeastern United States founded before the America ...

in 1980 and was a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

"Paul S. Atkins"
, Patomak website bio. Retrieved 2011-04-22. and

Kappa Alpha Order Kappa Alpha Order (), commonly known as Kappa Alpha or simply KA, is a social Fraternities and sororities, fraternity and a fraternal order founded in 1865 at Washington and Lee University, Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) i ...

. Atkins received his J.D. from

Vanderbilt University School of Law Vanderbilt University Law School (also known as Vanderbilt Law School or VLS) is a graduate school of Vanderbilt University. Established in 1874, it is one of the oldest law schools in the southern United States. Vanderbilt Law School has consiste ...

in 1983 and was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review.

Career

Atkins began his career as a lawyer in New York City with

Davis Polk & Wardwell Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, better known as Davis Polk is a white-shoe, international law firm headquartered in New York City with 980 attorneys worldwide and offices in Washington, D.C., Northern California, London, Paris, Madrid, Hong Kong, Beiji ...

, focusing on a wide range of corporate transactions for U.S. and foreign clients, including public and private securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions. He was resident for 2½ years in his firm's Paris office and admitted as ''conseil juridique'' in France in 1988. Before his appointment as commissioner, Atkins assisted financial services firms in improving their compliance with SEC regulations and worked with law enforcement agencies to investigate and rectify situations where investors had been harmed. Most prominent among these situations was Bennett Funding Group, Inc., a $1 billion leasing company that perpetrated the then-largest "Ponzi" fraud to date in U.S. history. More than 20,000 investors lost much of their investment. Assisting the company's court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, Atkins served as crisis president of Bennett's sole surviving subsidiary, according to his SEC biography. By stabilizing its finances and operations and rebuilding and expanding its business, he improved its share value for the remaining investors by almost 2000%. From 1990 to 1994, Atkins served on the staff of two former chairmen of the SEC,

Richard C. Breeden Richard C. Breeden (born December 6, 1949) is a former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, hedge fund manager, and corporate chairman. Early career Breeden began his career practicing corporate and securities law in New York C ...

and

Arthur Levitt Arthur Levitt Jr. (born February 3, 1931) is the former Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He served from 1993 to 2001 as the twenty-fifth and longest-serving chairman of the commission. Widely hailed as a c ...

. Under Chairman Breeden, he assisted in efforts to improve regulations regarding corporate governance, enhance shareholder communications, strengthen management accountability through proxy reform, and decrease barriers to entry for small businesses and middle market companies to the capital markets. Under Chairman Levitt, he was responsible for organizing the SEC's individual investor program, including the first investor town hall meetings, and an SEC consumer affairs advisory committee. Atkins was a commissioner of the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...

(SEC) from July 9, 2002 until his term's completion in August 2008.SEC Biography: Commissioner Paul S. Atkins
Security Exchange Commission. Retrieved February, 2011. He served with chairmen

Harvey Pitt Harvey L. Pitt (born February 28, 1945) is an American lawyer who served as the 26th chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), from 2001 to 2003. History Pitt graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1961. He graduated fr ...

William H. Donaldson William Henry Donaldson (born June 2, 1931) was the 27th Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), serving from February 2003 to June 2005. He served as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs in the Nix ...

, and

Christopher Cox Charles Christopher Cox (born October 16, 1952) is an American attorney and politician who served as chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a 17-year Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, and member of t ...

. In December 2016, Atkins joined a business forum assembled by President-Elect Trump to provide strategic and policy advice on economic issues.

Personal

Atkins is married with three sons.

Early life and education

Career

Personal

References

See also