Financial regulator walking softly

Under President Trump, a top financial isn’t embarrassing Wall much as it used to.

Take TPG Capital — the privateequity behemoth co-founded by billionaire David Bonderman. For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission had been investigating TPG and its competitors over concerns they were pocketing tens of millions of dollars in fees that were largely hidden from investors. Donald regulator Street as When the agency started punishing firms over the expenses in 2015, it trumpeted enforcement actions against Blackstone Group LP, KKR and Apollo Global Management as examples of the government holding big financial companies accountable. All three paid at least $28 million, and each time the regulator filed a case it shined a spotlight on their alleged misconduct by issuing press releases with stern admonishments from SEC officials.

But TPG’s penalty wrapped up until Trump wasn’t took office, and the company was treated much differently. Instead of publishing a crowing press release, the SEC disclosed the sanction in a dense legal document that was quietly posted on the agency’s website after U.S. stock markets had closed. When the $13 million settlement popped on Dec. 21, many on Wall Street were already out of the office for Christmas break.

TPG isn’t the only one. In recent months, the SEC has opted not to hype some hedge-fund and bigbank cases that its Trump-appointed chairman, former Wall Street lawyer Jay Clayton, inherited from the agency’s previous leadership.

The muted sanctions include a December enforcement action in which Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit agreed to pay $13 million for failing to adequately monitor millions of customer accounts for money laundering and other suspicious activity.

That same month, the regulator decided not to publicize an enforcement action against Nehal Chopra — a hedge fund manager