SEC names Kathleen Hutchinson director of international affairs office

Kathleen M. Hutchinson took over the SEC’s Office of International Affairs on June 24, 2026, turning an acting role she had held since January 2025 into a permanent post with direct reach into cross-border enforcement, supervisory coordination and technical assistance. For KPMG auditors and advisory teams working with foreign issuers, multinational groups and financial services clients, the appointment means continued pressure on how U.S. regulators work with their counterparts abroad.

Hutchinson is not new to the agency’s international machinery. She joined the SEC in 2003 as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, now the Division of Examinations, and moved to the Office of International Affairs in 2008. The international affairs office promotes investor protection in cross-border securities transactions by advancing international regulatory and enforcement cooperation, encouraging high regulatory standards worldwide and running technical assistance programs that strengthen regulatory infrastructure in global financial markets.

For KPMG’s audit practice, clients with foreign operations should expect continued scrutiny of how controls, disclosures and reporting processes hold up when multiple regulators are looking at the same issuer. For cross-border advisory teams, the question is how quickly information can move between jurisdictions and whether local compliance programs are consistent enough to survive that exchange. For financial services professionals, it adds another layer to conversations about market access, supervisory alignment and the way regulators treat firms that operate across borders.

In 2025 it created a Cross-Border Task Force within the Division of Enforcement to combat fraud involving foreign-based companies accessing U.S. capital markets, and enforcement cooperation is one of the top priorities of its international program. In June 2025, the commission also issued a concept release asking for comment on whether to narrow the foreign private issuer definition, a move that could affect disclosure obligations and market access for some foreign issuers.