Adeyemi: regulatory frameworks must protect the powerless
Some lawyers practice the law, and some shape it. Omo-Oba Olawale Oriola Adeyemi belongs firmly in the second category. As Senior Counsel at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission,
Some lawyers practice the law, and some shape it. Omo-Oba Olawale Oriola Adeyemi belongs firmly in the second category. As Senior Counsel at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, he spent years at the drafting table of American financial regulation, helping to write the rules that today protect millions of ordinary investors from the most powerful financial institutions in the world. As a Senior Associate at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett LLP, one of the most prestigious law firms on the planet, he advised global giants including JP Morgan, Blackstone, BlackRock, and KKR on governance, compliance, and risk. He spoke with Deputy News Editor JOSEPH JIBUEZE about discipline, duty, and what two decades in American financial law taught him about serving people.
You spent years as Senior Counsel at the SEC. For readers who may not follow financial regulation closely, what did that work actually involve?
Think of the SEC as the referee of the American financial market. My role was to write the rule book, specifically the sections that govern what financial professionals must tell their clients and how they must conduct themselves. Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, I worked on disclosure requirements: rules that oblige brokers and advisers to reveal, in plain language, what they charge, what conflicts of interest they carry, and what risks their clients are actually taking on. The principle is straightforward. People deserve to know the truth before they entrust someone with their money. I helped make that a legal obligation. Under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, my work shifted to conduct standards, the rules that require an adviser to put the client’s interest first, without exception. This became Regulation Best Interest. It sounds like a simple idea. In practice, it was one of the most contested regulatory efforts in recent memory, because it directly challenged the way certain institutions had operated for decades. We held the line, and the standard was adopted. Today, millions of Americans are better protected because of it. People deserve to know the truth before they entrust someone with their money. I helped make that a legal obligation.
The SEC Chairman’s Award is the agency’s highest internal recognition. You received it multiple times. What does that kind of acknowledgement mean to you?
It is humbling, genuinely. The SEC is full of exceptionally talented people who have dedicated their careers to public service. To be recognised among them is not something I take lightly. But what matters more to me than any award is the knowledge that the work had a real effect. When a retiree’s savings are protected because an adviser was required to act in good faith, that is the reward. The plaque on the wall is secondary.
You have worked at some of the most demanding institutions in the world, from the SEC to Faegre Drinker to Simpson Thacher. What have your years in American law taught you about what it means to govern well?
It has taught me that governance is fundamentally an act of service, not of authority. The best regulatory frameworks I have worked on share a common quality: they exist to protect the person with the least power in the room. Not the institution, not the adviser, not the regulator. The client. The ordinary person. When you build systems with that person at the centre, you build systems that last. When you build them for the benefit of those already powerful, they eventually collapse under the weight of their own contradictions. I carry that lesson everywhere. It shapes how I think about leadership in every context. The measure of any institution is how it treats the most vulnerable person it is responsible for. The measure of any institution is how it treats the most vulnerable person it is responsible for.
Alongside your legal career, you have invested significantly in restoring your family’s ancestral home, Ule Obanlefa Olufadekemi, in Ijebu-Ode. Tell us about that project.
Ule Obanlefa is the ancestral compound where my great-great-grandfather, Omo-Oba Oduwole Obanlefa Olufadi was born and my grandfather, Omo-Oba Fasasi Adebisi Adeyemi, served as Olori-Ebi of our royal family for twenty-five years. It is the physical home of our lineage, the Olufadi/Obanlefa Royal Family of the Fusengbuwa Ruling House in Ijebu-Ode. When my grandfather passed, the compound needed significant restoration. I undertook that work with great care, because I believe a family that allows its ancestral home to fall into disrepair has quietly given up on something important. The restoration was not simply a construction project. It was a declaration. The gate now bears a bronze plaque with a crown, a sceptre, and the family name. That is a statement of continuity, of presence, and of responsibility to the generations that will come after us. Our history is worth preserving. Our future is worth building. Those two things are not in conflict.
You remain deeply connected to Ijebuland despite a career built largely in the United States. How do you think about your responsibilities to your community of origin?
I think about them constantly. Ijebuland shaped everything I am. I was raised in Ijebu-Ode, educated at Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, and formed in the values of a family that took public responsibility seriously. My grandfather gave twenty-five years of leadership to our royal family without fanfare. That model of quiet, committed service is one I carry with me. What I want to see for Ijebuland, and what I work toward in whatever capacity I can, includes three things above all. First, full electrification of the land. Without reliable power, there is no sustainable commerce, no quality healthcare at night, no environment in which young people can build businesses and stay. Second, serious investment in our young people, through mentorship, through economic opportunity, through attracting partnerships that allow Ijebu talent to flourish at home rather than always abroad. And third, the active preservation of our culture: our language, our festivals, our customary law and traditions. Modernity and heritage are not enemies. But heritage requires tending, and that tending must be intentional.
As you look ahead, what does a career built on accountability and protection mean for the kind of leader you hope to be, in law and beyond?
It means I approach every responsibility with the same question: who is the most vulnerable person in this room, and is the system I am part of working for them? That question guided my regulatory work at the SEC. It guides my advisory work today. I was trained in institutions that hold themselves to extraordinary standards of rigour, ethics, and public accountability. Georgetown, Hofstra, the SEC, Simpson Thacher. Those standards do not stay at the office door. They travel with you. I left Ijebu-Ode to see the world, as many of our generation did. But the education was always meant to come home. Whatever platform I am given, that is the commitment: to bring the best of what I have learned in service of the people and the place that made me.
