Business Notes REGULATION

The Securities and Exchange Commission has a new top watchdog. After toiling for twelve years as an SEC staff attorney, William R. McLucas, 39, last week was named director of enforcement. He succeeds Gary Lynch, 39, bane of inside traders Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine, who resigned last summer to take a job at a New York City law firm. McLucas suggested that after years of prosecuting high-profile Wall Street insider-trading cases, the agency might additionally focus more closely on basic securities abuses, in which brokers exploit unsophisticated small Main Street investors.

SEC Chairman Richard Breeden announced the formation of a new 25-person SEC unit to combat securities violations at financial institutions. One of the group's goals: to prevent more disasters like the case of Lincoln Savings & Loan, whose chairman, Charles Keating, managed to run up $2.5 billion in losses, driving the California thrift into bankruptcy. With S&Ls foundering almost daily, the gesture seems like an afterthought -- and an undersized one at that.