Christopher Cutler is a partner with Foley & Lardner LLP. He represents international and national accounting firms, companies, auditors and individuals in civil, criminal and regulatory matters, including in investigations before the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He is a member of the Securities Enforcement & Litigation Practice.
Prior to joining Foley, Mr. Cutler worked with the PCAOB, where he was the first employee of the board's Division of Enforcement and Investigations and helped design and implement many of the division's current enforcement policies and procedures. Before the PCAOB, Mr. Cutler was with the SEC's Division of Enforcement where he opened the Enron investigation and was instrumental in the SEC's settled fraud actions against various financial institutions, resulting in more than $320 million of disgorged funds and penalties to be distributed to injured Enron investors. Additionally, he assisted the SEC and the Department of Justice's Enron Task Force in other related Enron cases, including those against Enron's former CEO. In addition, Mr. Cutler tried and settled multiple cases involving financial fraud, insider trading and broker/dealer misconduct.
Prior to his legal career, Mr. Cutler worked for a company that provided financial accounting services to large financial institutions. He is highly knowledgeable in both Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and PCAOB auditing standards (formerly Generally Accepted Auditing Standards), and has extensive experience with matters involving complex financial accounting issues.
Mr. Cutler speaks frequently at CLE and CPE programs and has provided multiple training sessions to in-house counsel, company executives and law firms. In particular, he has spoken at the Annual AICPA National Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB Developments and at the Annual ALI-ABA Accountants' Liability Conference.
Mr. Cutler is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Florida.