SEC creates risk, strategy division

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission has merged several offices and functions to create a division of risk, strategy and financial innovation.

The new division will be headed by Henry T.C. Hu, a professor of banking and finance law at the University of Texas, the agency announced Wednesday.

The division combines the SEC's Office of Economic Analysis, Office of Risk Assessment and other functions. It will assume those areas as well as strategic and long-term analysis, identification of new trends in financial markets, and risk to the financial system.

The move was the latest in a series of changes made by SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro, who took over in January and has revamped enforcement efforts following the agency's failure to discover the massive fraud scheme conducted for nearly two decades by Bernard Madoff.

Also Wednesday, Schapiro and her British counterpart, Hector Sants, announced plans to look into common approaches for the U.S. and Britain to regulation of hedge funds and other financial market participants. They agreed to identify a common set of data that could be collected from hedge funds to help identify potential risks.

Sants is chief executive of Britain's Financial Services Authority. The two regulatory agencies have worked together on issues related to the financial crisis.