Norm Champ to depart SEC

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Investment Management will depart before the end of the month, the agency announced Wednesday. Norm Champ, who took over as head of the division in 2012 when Eileen Rominger left, will become a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School for the spring semester and also lecture about investment management law. During his tenure, Mr. Champ and the division played an important role in developing rules that reformed money market funds and were instrumental in granting SEC approval of actively managed funds that combine the features of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. In past appearances before industry groups, Mr. Champ stressed the division's efforts to increase transparency about areas of concern. He would cite the development of guidance updates, statements from staff that did not carry the weight of rules but gave investment companies and advisers a sense of the agency's opinions about regulatory topics. He also led the division's effort to increase the use of industry data to monitor risks to investors. Mr. Champ joined the SEC in 2010, serving as deputy director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations for two years and briefly working as the associate director of the New York regional office. Before coming to the SEC, Mr. Champ was general counsel for Chilton Investment Company, an adviser to private funds and managed accounts. The SEC has not yet announced his replacement.