Securities Association Taps Exchange Lawyer as General Counsel

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has hired former SEC and NYSE veteran Saima Ahmed as general counsel.

Ahmed joins the trade association for the US securities industry from NYSE Regulation Inc., the regulatory arm of the Intercontinental Exchange Inc.-owned New York Stock Exchange. She was a senior director and head of the exchange’s market watch and corporate actions groups.

“We are excited to have Saima join SIFMA,” chief executive Kenneth Bentsen Jr. said in a statement. “Saima’s extensive experience as a litigator, regulator, and manager will be a tremendous asset to SIFMA and our members.”

In her new role, Ahmed will oversee all legal, compliance, and litigation matters for the group, which represents asset managers, banks, and other securities firms. Ahmed will also work on regulatory initiatives and oversee the organization’s relationships with regulators and outside counsel.

“I am honored to join SIFMA and look forward to working with the talented lawyers within the Office of the General Counsel and the entire SIFMA staff,” Ahmed said in a statement.

The former federal prosecutor in New York also was senior counsel with the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement and its market abuse unit before joining the NYSE in 2015.

Ahmed began her career as a litigation associate at Sidley Austin and will officially join SIFMA in October based in New York.

She replaces SIFMA’s longtime legal chief Ira Hammerman, who the organization announced in January would retire at year’s end. Hammerman, a former Washington-based partner at Clifford Chance and its predecessor Rogers & Wells joined SIFMA as general counsel in 2004.

SIFMA’s most recent federal tax filing for fiscal 2019-20 shows that Hammerman received nearly $1.1 million in total compensation that year.

The filing also detailed payments by SIFMA to four outside law firms—$705,000 to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; $640,400 to Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; $566,500 to Davis Polk & Wardwell; and nearly $199,000 to Sidley—as well as almost $627,500 to accounting firm Ernst & Young for consulting work.

SIFMA’s addition of Ahmed comes after a pair of trade groups for the US energy industry named new in-house legal chiefs earlier this year. In March, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce tapped its interim general counsel and president of its Institute for Legal Reform, Harold Kim, to become its new chief legal officer.