SEC Seeks Final Judgment Against Former Western Asset Co-CIO Ken Leech in Cherry Picking Case

The Securities and Exchange Commission today moved for entry of a final judgment by consent against Stephen Kenneth Leech II, the former co-chief investment officer of registered investment adviser Western Asset Management Company LLC, whom the SEC previously charged with a multi-year cherry-picking allocation scheme. As alleged in the SEC’s November 2024 complaint, from at least January 2021 through October 2023, Leech placed trades and then routinely delayed allocations until near or after futures markets set daily settlement prices, allowing him to observe price movements and disproportionally allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in realized and unrealized first‑day gains to favored portfolios and a similar amount of realized and unrealized first‑day losses to disfavored portfolios.