The Securities and Exchange Commission announced late Thursday afternoon that Dalia Blass, a securities attorney and former agency staff member, has been named director of the Division of Investment Management. Ms. Blass returns to the agency, where she previously worked for more than a decade, to run a division with influence over fiduciary duty.
She will take over the division that regulates investment advisers as well as investment companies, including mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, and variable insurance products. In the role, she will influence how the agency addresses investment advice standards and whether it proposes a uniform fiduciary rule. She replaces David Grim, a longtime SEC staffer who rose through the ranks to take over investment management in 2015.
Ms. Blass joins the SEC from the law firm Ropes & Gray, where she was a counsel concentrating on investment-fund, private equity and regulatory matters, according to an SEC statement. A former SEC assistant chief counsel in investment management, she spent more than a decade at the agency. While at the SEC, she helped determine whether the agency would approve new ETFs.
The key part to all this as relates to cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular is that Ropes & Grayis the firm that advised the Winklevoss twins on their most recent bid for SEC approval.
An Ethereum ETF by Joseph Quintilian and Gregory DiPrisco, who have founded EtherIndex to act as a trust for the ETF, is also awaiting SEC approval.
SEC has recently re-opened the bitcoin ETF decision for re-consideration. It’s unclear how long such re-consideration will take but the Winklevoss twins have patiently worked through the process for more than three years and with this new appointment it looks more likely that the ETF will be approved.
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