SEED Database
The Securities Enforcement Empirical Database (SEED) tracks and records information for SEC enforcement actions filed against public companies traded on major U.S. exchanges and their subsidiaries.
Created by the NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business in cooperation with Cornerstone Research, SEED facilitates the analysis and reporting of SEC enforcement actions through regular updates of new filings and settlement information for ongoing enforcement actions. The variables tracked include defendant names and types, violations, venues, and resolutions.
“Our goal is to shed light on the SEC’s securities law enforcement decisions. SEED is the first public database to provide easily searchable and verified data to researchers, counsel, and corporations, as well as regular reports on developments and trends.”
—Professor Stephen Choi, Co-Director of the Pollack Center for Law & Business.
Pollack Center for Law & Business
For press inquiries about NYU, please contact Michael Orey at Michael.Orey@nyu.edu.
For information about this site, including access for academic scholars, please contact law.seed@nyu.edu.
Cornerstone Research
For press inquiries about Cornerstone Research, please contact Elisabeth Gaubinger at egaubinger@cornerstone.com.
For information about Cornerstone Research materials on this site, please contact sec_research@cornerstone.com.
See color accessible chart. See full text description.
SEC Enforcement Activity: Public Companies and Subsidiaries (November 2026)
Key takeaways from the SEED research report for FY 2026 include:
- New actions against public companies and subsidiaries decreased to 16 actions in FY 2026. This is 71% lower than FY 2025. This is consistent with Chair Paul Atkins’s recent statement that the SEC “no longer measure[s] the success of [its enforcement] program by the quantity of enforcement actions” that are brought.
- 50% of these actions had Issuer Reporting and Disclosure allegations, an increase from 39% in FY 2025. This continued focus on Issuer Reporting and Disclosure allegations is consistent with statements made by Chair Atkins and his administration that SEC enforcement should be brought “to address . . . accounting and financial frauds.”
- SEC monetary settlements in these actions totaled $184 million, the lowest in SEED and approximately $550 million less than the previous lowest total in FY 2012. The average and median monetary settlements of $12 million and $1 million were the lowest and second lowest in any fiscal year in SEED, respectively. Civil penalties accounted for the highest percentage of the total monetary settlement for any fiscal year in SEED.
- 63% of settling defendants had a monetary settlement, the lowest since FY 2010.
- The SEC noted cooperation by 53% of public company and subsidiary defendants in actions settled in FY 2026, the lowest level since FY 2014.
Prior SEED and Cornerstone Research Reports
This project is a collaboration between these organizations:
