David M. Lynn is a partner in the Washington D.C. Office of Morrison & Foerster, and is co-chair of the firm’s Corporate Finance Practice. He is the former Chief Counsel of the Division of Corporation Finance at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Dave is a highly respected securities advisory counsel who provides guidance to clients ranging from the Fortune 500 to newly-public on securities law compliance, as well as counseling on corporate governance, executive compensation, and disclosure best practices. In addition to being a leading authority on SEC issues, Mr. Lynn is particularly well known in the area of executive compensation disclosure, having co-authored, “The Executive Compensation Disclosure Treatise and Reporting Guide.”
While serving as Chief Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance, Mr. Lynn led the rulemaking team that drafted sweeping revisions to the SEC's executive compensation and related party disclosure rules. Mr. Lynn re-joined the SEC as Chief Counsel shortly after adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and served in that position until 2007. As a result, he was intimately involved in implementing and interpreting the record amount of SEC rulemaking that occurred in the wake of SOX. Mr. Lynn initially served on the SEC staff from 1995-2000 as an Attorney-Advisor and subsequently a Special Counsel in the Division of Corporation Finance. While in private practice from 2000-2003, he advised clients on SEC investigations, securities transactions, mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance.
Mr. Lynn is co-editor of TheCorporateCounsel.net, CompensationStandards.com, and The Corporate Counsel, and a regular contributor to The Corporate Executive and Compensation Standards. Mr. Lynn is also co-author of “Considerations for Foreign Banks Financing in the US,” published by International Financial Law Review (2012).
He currently serves as Vice Chair of the ABA Business Law Section's Federal Regulation of Securities Committee and is Co-Chair of the Practising Law institute’s Annual Securities Regulation Institute. He was named in 2012 to the list of “Attorneys Who Matter” for Securities by Ethisphere Institute. Dave is also named as a leading lawyer by Chambers USA 2013 for Securities: Regulation, named to the 2013 Best Lawyers in America list, and ranked as a leading lawyer by Legal 500 USA 2013 in the categories of Capital Markets: Equity Offerings and Capital Markets: Debt Offerings.