Industry Veteran Is Named SEC Accountant

Donald Nicolaisen, a senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, was named chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission, as Chairman William Donaldson turned to a 36-year industry insider to fill a post that’s been vacant since November.

Nicolaisen, 59, will lead the SEC office that sets rules for accountants at a time when the commission has increased regulation of the industry in the wake of auditing failures that helped drive Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. into bankruptcy protection. Nicolaisen said his experience with the world’s biggest accounting firm would not keep him from being a tough and vigilant watchdog.

“I will enforce the law and demand that people act with integrity and ethics,” Nicolaisen said at a news conference at the SEC’s Washington office. “As a regulator, I will ensure that investor interests are put above the interests of all others.”

Donaldson’s appointment of a Pricewaterhouse partner comes in the same week the SEC barred two of the firm’s accountants from auditing public companies for their roles in the audits of Tyco International Ltd. and MicroStrategy Inc. Nicolaisen will have to overcome the taint the four biggest auditing firms have suffered from their involvement in recent accounting scandals, some accountants said.

Nicolaisen’s “first order of business will be to demonstrate that he represents investors and not PricewaterhouseCoopers or the accounting profession,” said J. Edward Ketz, professor of accounting at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business.

The appointment is the first top SEC staff position that Donaldson has filled. Nicolaisen will work closely with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Chairman William McDonough, whom Donaldson appointed in April to lead the new regulator created last year by Congress to police the accounting industry.

The SEC oversees the accounting board.