Peggy Willenbucher

Marguerite (Peggy) Willenbucher is a Bates Group affiliate expert based in New York City. Peggy joined Bates after more than five years with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, twenty-three years in various senior level attorney positions at Merrill Lynch, and five years with SIFMA. She is an accomplished financial services attorney with extensive experience in the retail broker-dealer/investment advisory and capital markets fields.

Ms. Willenbucher joined the SEC as an industry expert, first as a Senior Specialized Examiner and then as a Senior Special Counsel to the Office of the Director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE). She performed retail sales practices examinations, including cross-firm examinations, concerning such matters as: sales of complex products; the manufacture and sale of structured notes; retail supervision; retail compliance and surveillance routines; retail clearing firms; dealings with senior investors; AML compliance; equity trading and market making; sales of municipal and other fixed income securities to retail investors; and compliance with the Volcker Rule in a fixed income marketing-making business for retail investors. Ms. Willenbucher also spent time as a consultant to a major law firm in New York and performed significant work on the creation of the largest retail broker-dealer between two financial services firms on a joint venture basis.

Ms. Willenbucher spent the majority of her career with Merrill Lynch, most recently as Managing Director and Assistant General Counsel. She provided day-to-day legal advice on a variety of financial instruments, packaged products and derivatives (such as swaps and OTC options) to the retail broker-dealer and investment advisory businesses, as well as to the institutional sales and the global equities and derivatives sales and trading businesses. Ms. Willenbucher has substantial experience in setting up initial compliance routines and governance processes for new products and businesses, and in gaining any necessary regulatory approvals