Mr. Robert B. Stebbins serves as DFC’s Vice President and General Counsel. In this role he serves as the chief legal officer and is a member of DFC’s executive management team.
Mr. Stebbins was previously a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, in the Corporate & Financial Services Department and Co-Chair of the firm’s Corporate Governance practice. At Wilkie, oversaw a diverse practice, focusing on Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) compliance and enforcement issues, corporate governance matters, internal and governmental investigations, and advising boards of directors and special committees thereof. He is also a leading transactional attorney, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital matters, investment funds, and capital markets transactions.
From 2017 to 2021, Mr. Stebbins served as General Counsel for the SEC. As the SEC’s chief legal officer and head of its Office of the General Counsel (OGC), he led a 150-person team responsible for litigation, advising on rulemaking matters and enforcement actions, and preparing Commission opinions in adjudications. He led OGC during one of the most active and wide-ranging rule calendars in the agency’s history, advising on more than 85 rules, and hundreds of SEC and staff orders and interpretive releases. During his tenure, OGC also provided day-to-day guidance to the SEC’s Enforcement Division on over 2,750 enforcement actions. In addition, OGC provided legal advice to the SEC’s commissioners and the agency’s five divisions and 24 offices.
In his capacity as SEC General Counsel, Mr. Stebbins structured and supervised internal investigations, coordinated interagency matters with other federal agencies, and provided briefings to congressional committees. In the 2020 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, OGC ranked as the seventh best place to work out of 411 federal government offices (2019, 14th out of 420; 2018, 5th out of 415).
During the spring of 2020, Mr. Stebbins was detailed to the Department of the Treasury to advise on the CARES Act implementation, while at the same time continuing to function as the SEC’s General Counsel, for which he received the Secretary of Treasury’s Honor Award.
He received a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1993 and a B.S. (magna cum laude) from Central Michigan University in 1988.