Paul Atkins is a former Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He was appointed by President George W. Bush in July 2002 and left office in August 2008. During his two terms, he advocated transparency and consistency in the SEC's decision-making and operations; smarter regulation that considers costs and benefits; improvements to the competitiveness and attractiveness of the US capital markets; and investor protection and education (including by conducting more than 50 investor town hall meetings with senior citizens, military personnel, and other investor groups). Mr. Atkins was instrumental in the creation in early 2008 of the SEC's Microcap Fraud Working Group, whose focus is on stock manipulations and Ponzi schemes, an area that previously lacked coordinated enforcement attention and resources.

In addition to his policy-making role on hundreds of SEC rule-related actions and enforcement cases, Mr. Atkins represented the SEC at various meetings of the Transatlantic Economic Council, the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, the World Economic Forum, and the Transatlantic Business Dialogue. He paid official visits to almost two dozen countries on five continents.

Prior to his appointment as commissioner, Mr. Atkins was a partner of Pricewaterhouse Coopers and its predecessor firm, Coopers & Lybrand. He focused on advisory work for financial services firms, including regulatory compliance, internal controls, and risk management issues. In 1996-1997, he was president of Resort Funding, Inc., a financially troubled, publicly traded lending institution where, by stabilizing its finances and operations and rebuilding its business, he improved its share value by almost 2000% before its ultimate sale. From 1990-1994 he served on the staffs of SEC chairmen Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt as chief of staff and counselor, respectively. From 1984-1990 he was a lawyer with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York, representing U.S. and foreign clients on a wide range of corporate finance and business combination transactions. He was resident for 2 1/2 years in his firm's Paris office and was admitted as conseil juridique in France in 1988. Mr. Atkins received his A.B., summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Wofford College and his J.D. from Vanderbilt University School of Law, where he was Senior Student Writing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review.