Wolburgh Jenah to retire from IIROC this fall

At this point, Wolburgh Jenah isn’t sure what she will do next. She plans to finish her time with IIROC before making that decision. The move to leave, she says, just feels right. “Moving on is good, renewal is good,” she says, adding that she always expected to spend about six or seven years in the job.

“I’ve always believed that seven years is a good tenure, and it will be almost eight years, and it’s not been a quiet eight years,” she says. “I did what I came in to do, and feel good about it. The organization is in good shape. It’s strong, relevant, doing great work. It’s recognized and respected domestically and internationally. It feels like a good time to move on.”

Wolburgh Jenah was tapped to lead the creation of IIROC through a merger of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada (IDA) and Market Regulation Services Inc. She first came to the IDA from the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) in June 2007, and helmed the complicated regulatory merger which established IIROC in 2008.

Soon after she started, the markets were faced with the freezing of non-bank ABCP in Canada, which was followed by the global financial crisis, and subsequent recession, in 2008. And, there have been a succession of major market upheavals since then, including the discovery of the Madoff fraud; the “flash crash”; the collapse of a couple of U.S. firms including MF Global; and, the ongoing LIBOR and foreign exchange market manipulation scandals.

Dealing with all of these events has been a challenge, and a lot of work, Wolburgh Jenah notes, and stresses that she’s proud of how IIROC has handled them, and continued to develop as an organization at the same time.

One unfulfilled aspiration during her time at IIROC was a possible merger with the other major industry SRO, the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA); which never came off despite IIROC’s interest in combining the organizations. And, Wolburgh Jenah indicates that she still thinks an SRO merger makes sense.

“Given the consolidation that’s going on in the industry, especially over the last few years, efforts to streamline regulation and find those synergies actually take on more significance,” she says, adding that she believes a merger is inevitable at some point.

In the meantime though, Wolburgh Jenah doesn’t expect any major shifts ahead for IIROC in her remaining months on the job. Her first priority will be ensuring a smooth transition once the board identifies her successor. And, she’ll also be focusing a good deal of attention on refreshing IIROC’s strategic plan, which expires in 2015.

Her message to the staff that she will be leaving behind is that she’s proud of the work they’ve done to date, and that she expects IIROC to continue building on that foundation in the years ahead.