Michele M. Anderson

Michele M. Anderson, a partner in the firm’s National Office, advises clients and Latham lawyers facing complex issues arising under the US securities laws. 

Prior to joining Latham, she served for 24 years in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance. She held a number of senior positions in the Division, including most recently serving as Associate Director and Acting Deputy Director. For nearly 15 years she led and then oversaw the Division’s Office of Mergers and Acquisitions. Ms. Anderson leverages her extensive knowledge and SEC experience to help the firm’s lawyers and clients navigate the disclosure requirements and other SEC rules that affect domestic and cross-border M&A and capital markets transactions. She also advises public company clients confronting shareholder activism and corporate governance issues.

As Associate Director at the SEC, Ms. Anderson oversaw the Division’s legal and policy program and the work of the Office of Mergers and Acquisitions, the Office of International Corporate Finance, and the Office of Structured Finance. She directed rulemaking initiatives and no-action, interpretive, and exemptive positions on:

• Domestic and cross-border M&A transactions
• Federal proxy rules
• Registration, disclosure, and reporting requirements that apply to foreign issuers and issuers of asset-backed securities

As Chief of the Office of Mergers and Acquisitions, Ms. Anderson managed the SEC’s regulation of M&A transactions and the application and interpretation of SEC rules relating to:

• Tender offers
• Mergers
• Going-private transactions
• Debt restructurings
• Beneficial ownership reporting
• Contested and other non-routine proxy solicitations

She also has extensive experience with the full range of SEC reporting and disclosure obligations as a result of her broad oversight responsibility for the SEC’s disclosure review program for public companies.

Ms. Anderson is a frequent speaker on federal securities law developments, public company M&A, activism, and shareholder voting, and has served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where she taught the course “Takeovers, Mergers and Acquisitions.”