Alex Cohen is a corporate partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins and co-chair of the firm’s Capital Markets Practice Group. His practice focuses on a broad range of US securities regulation and enforcement matters.
Mr. Cohen is a former senior official of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. He joined the SEC staff in 2006 as Deputy General Counsel for Legal Policy and Administrative Practice and later served as Deputy Chief of Staff. As Deputy Chief of Staff and senior legal counsel in the Chairman’s Office, Mr. Cohen advised the SEC Chairman on highly sensitive questions across all aspects of the agency’s work, including the SEC’s response to the 2008 financial crisis. He also served as the Chairman’s liaison to Commissioners and senior agency staff in connection with rulemaking, enforcement matters and special projects.
In his role as Deputy General Counsel, Mr. Cohen worked closely with the Chairman, Commissioners and senior agency staff to develop and implement SEC rulemakings and provided advice on complex legal matters.
Mr. Cohen’s experience covers complex financial transactions, SEC registration and reporting, corporate governance, accounting restatements, investigations by the SEC and related issues. He was a partner in Latham’s London and Hong Kong offices from 2001-2006, and he has particular expertise advising non-US companies on US securities law matters.
Mr. Cohen is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches corporate governance. A 1988 graduate of Yale Law School, Mr. Cohen served as a law clerk to the Honorable Wilfred Feinberg of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1989 to 1990. He received his MA in international relations from Yale University in 1985 and his BA cum laude in political science from Yale in 1982. He is fluent in French, Dutch and Spanish.