The successor to top SEC enforcement official Stephen M. Cutler is a deputy within the department, Linda Chatman Thomsen.

Washington insiders and SEC followers say that the promotion, the first time a woman will hold the post, means the SEC will continue its hard line in the enforcement area.

"This is a very powerful signal by the commission about their confidence in the enforcement division," Joel Seligman, dean of the Washington University law school and the author of a history of the SEC, told the Washington Post.

Thomsen continues to lead the SEC's investigation of Enron, and in the past has investigated MicroStrategy Inc. and Michael Milken. She first joined the SEC in 1995 as a litigator. She was promoted to assistant director of the division of enforcment in 1997 and associate director in 2000. She assumed her current role as Cutler's deputy in January of 2002.

In her pre-SEC days, Thomsen worked at the Washington D.C. office of law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, served as a federal prosecutor in Maryland and also graduated from Harvard Law.  

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