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| Aulana Peters with Dean Robert Rasmussen |
Aulana Peters '73 discusses SEC appointment and partnership at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Aulana Peters ’73 did not know it at the time, but her candidacy to serve on the Securities and Exchange Commission was initially discussed in a hot tub at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco.
“A Republican, the then Chairman of the SEC, found himself in a hot tub at the Bohemian Club with a Democrat and asked if he knew any good Democrats who could fill a position on the SEC. Eventually, the Democrat suggested my name and all of a sudden, I was on a short list of potential candidates,” said Peters, with a laugh.
Peters was the featured guest at the recent Conversations with the Dean event hosted by USC Gould School of Law Dean Robert K. Rasmussen. The speaker series features high-profile business leaders, politicians and attorneys, including USC Gould alumni. A crowd of about 150 students, faculty and staff gathered to hear the Nov. 6 discussion.
Peters detailed her legal career that included a partnership at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles before and after being named a commissioner on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Peters was the first African American and third woman to serve as commissioner at the agency, which has the primary responsibility for enforcing the federal securities laws and regulating the securities industry, the nation's stock and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets.
“This is the one of the most prestigious appointment you can have in our profession,” Rasmussen said at the Conversations with the Dean event.
Peters said it was an opportunity of a lifetime. “It was a terrific, terrific experience,” she said. “If you’re thinking about public service – and I was – the SEC was a great place to do it. Being a commissioner was a fantastic job, but a lot of work: half of it involved developing laws and regulations and the other half was enforcing laws already on the books.”
Although the SEC is a bipartisan commission, Peters said most of the votes were unanimous and it was often difficult to tell which commissioners were Democrat and which were Republican.
“Most of the time we reached a consensus, but there were a few exceptions,” she said. “One in particular was when Congress asked the SEC to conduct a study of the Primary Dealer market and recommend whether it should be regulated or not. The commission directed its staff to conduct the requested study. Ultimately, the staff concluded, as did I, that minimal regulation would be beneficial.”
After much discussion, the final vote on the issue was 4-1 to reject the staff recommendation with Peters casting the lone vote for regulation. “Right then, I advised the Chairman that I wished to file a “Minority Report” with Congress. He said ‘fine’ and I did.”
“I’m certainly accustomed to being in the minority,” Peters said with a laugh. “And in instances like this, I wasn’t going to back down.” Eventually, Congress adopted legislation imposing limited regulation on Primary Dealers.
After serving on the SEC for four years, Peters returned to Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, where she worked on class action and commercial litigation cases.
In response to a question, Peters said that as a litigator, she saw herself as a problem solver. “I tried to understand the client and understand the problem, and figure out a solution,” she said. “It was also important to know and understand your opponent’s case. It was fun, and I loved it. As a trial lawyer, you’re focused on the here and now.”
Although she retired from the firm in 2002, she is currently active on three boards of directors, including 3M Company, Deere & Company and Northrop Grumman Corporation.
“A director’s job is to oversee those managing the day-to-day activities of the company,” she said. “We do not make day to day operational decisions, but discuss and decide broad strategic issues with management.”
The board also hires – and at times fires - the chief executive officer. “It’s important that the CEO is thoughtful, intelligent and a visionary,” she said. “Our most important job is to protect the shareholder.”
In addition to serving on the boards, Peters sits on the Accountability Advisory Council of the U.S. Comptroller General. Peters recently finished a stint on the Madrid-based International Public Interest Oversight Board, which oversees the development and implementation of international standards for auditing, and accountants’ education and ethics.
When asked by a law student about whom she turned to for advice and mentorship in her early days at Gibson, Peters said several partners at the firm “made sure I didn’t make too many missteps or miss opportunities.”
She recalled a time when one of the partners – who she did not name, but is a well-known attorney today - sent her to New York City to take a depositions of the named plaintiffs in a class action case she was working with him.
“I was a third-year associate at the time. He came into my office and said ‘Here’s my plane ticket and here’s my hotel reservation - you need to go. Your flight is a 4 p.m. this afternoon,’” she said. “I didn’t think I could do it, but he was confident I could. More importantly, he advised me that in order to get the right professional opportunities, I needed to be seen as being ready and willing to take on these sorts of emergency assignments, even when it meant leaving home for five days on the spur of the moment. I realized this was invaluable advice.”
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