WASHINGTON — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that effective October 15, 2012, Greg Ahern will join FINRA as Executive Vice President for Corporate Communications and Government Relations. In this role, Ahern will be responsible for media, government relations, and investor education programs, and oversee FINRA's editorial production, design, and multimedia communications services. Ahern will also assume oversight responsibilities for FINRA's Member Relations group. This realignment will help FINRA better coordinate interaction with its various constituencies.
Ahern is currently the Chief Public Communications Officer for the Investment Company Institute (ICI), the mutual fund industry trade association. At ICI he has been responsible for all strategic communications for the past seven years. Prior to joining ICI, Ahern worked for institutional money management firms in a variety of roles with increasing responsibility, heading up marketing and communications. These jobs included eight years at State Street Corp. and seven years at the Boston Company, both in Boston.
Richard Ketchum, FINRA Chairman and CEO, said, "Greg brings significant communications and marketing experience to FINRA at an important time. He is smart, strategic and energetic and will help us focus our efforts to protect investors and communicate effectively with our many stakeholders including investors, the media, Congress and the industry."
FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. FINRA is dedicated to investor protection and market integrity through effective and efficient regulation and complementary compliance and technology-based services. FINRA touches virtually every aspect of the securities business – from registering and educating all industry participants to examining securities firms, writing rules, enforcing those rules and the federal securities laws, informing and educating the investing public, providing trade reporting and other industry utilities, and administering the largest dispute resolution forum for investors and firms. For more information, please visit www.finra.org.