Dive Brief:

• The Securities and Exchange Commission Chief Accountant Paul Munter will retire effective Jan. 24, about four days after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a Tuesday SEC press release. SEC Chair Gary Gensler, meanwhile, is poised to leave the agency on Jan. 20.  
• A prolific and articulate speaker, Munter pulled no punches when it came to sounding his views on all manner of financial reporting issues, publishing 22 statements and speeches during his tenure. “I thank Paul for his leadership of the Office of the Chief Accountant, his counsel, and his clear accounting advice,” Gensler said in a statement in the release. “As Chief Accountant, he led the office in the critical work of ensuring that investors have access to the highest-quality financial disclosures from public companies.
• Munter, who has been with the agency since 2019, became acting chief accountant in 2021 and rose to take the chief accountant seat in January of 2023, according to the release. During his tenure he led the agency’s oversight of the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. 

Dive Insight:

Munter’s plan to exit comes as some federal officials are preparing to depart in advance of the second Trump administration’s term.  

Similar to his boss Gensler, Munter’s talks were at times full-throated when it came to detailing his support for robust rulemaking and financial reporting transparency that serves investors, as well as concerns that the accounting industry was facing headwinds.   

For example, in July of 2023 he called out the practice by which he said some crypto companies pay for less precise reviews that they then misrepresent to investors as audits. In a written statement, Munter warned that accounting firms could be held legally liable for material misstatements made by clients in the crypto-asset sector that did so, CFO Dive previously reported. 

While serving as acting chief accountant in 2022, he also called out what he said were signs of a decline in the level of “professionalism” among employees at some of the largest accounting firms. Speaking at a conference in New York City, Munter urged academics in the audience to push back against the notion that accounting is just an industry, saying that mindset leads to a deterioration in confidence in the profession as well as in financial information used by investors. 

At the time, Munter did not identify any firms by name, but the SEC in June of 2022 fined Ernst & Young $100 million for cheating by its auditors on ethics exams and for withholding evidence of wrongdoing from the agency’s Enforcement Division.   

A Certified Public Accountant with a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Colorado, Munter came to the SEC with experience in the traditional Big Four accounting track as well as with accounting standard setting. He previously worked at KPMG, where he was lead technical partner for the U.S. firm’s international accounting and International Financial Reporting Standards activities.