Aichele Officially Out as Chief of Staff, Gromis-Baker In

Governor Tom Corbett announced late Wednesday that Stephen S. Aichele has officially stepped down as chief of staff and will be replaced by Republican strategist Leslie Gromis-Baker.

Facing Criticism, AOL Chief Reverses Change to 401(k) Plan

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DealBook: Barclays Chief Declines Annual Bonus

Barnes & Noble Promotes E-Reader Head to Chief Executive

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Consumer Safety Chief Leaves a Small Agency With Bigger Powers

By the end of her four-year term, which came to a close on Friday, she can say that she has presided over a significant increase of the agency’s powers. And Ms. Tenenbaum, 62, has not been shy about using them. The agency recently leveled its highest fine ever — $3.9 million — against Ross, the discount retailer, because it continued to sell what the commission said was defective children’s clothing, even after warnings from the agency.

She and the safety commission also waded into one of the most contentious topics in the sports world: protecting football players from head injuries. The result was the Youth Football Brain Safety initiative, which called for the replacement of youth league helmets with safer models paid for by the National Football League, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the N.F.L. Players Association.

“I just felt like it was something that needed to be done,” she said.

But before she could make much headway on issues, Ms. Tenenbaum had to persuade consumer advocates that she would work for them while reassuring manufacturers that the agency would not be unfair in carrying out its new powers. It was a difficult juggling act that some industry officials say Ms. Tenenbaum has managed to pull off.

“What I was most glad about is that she treated us and others in the industry as a resource, rather than the enemy,” said Carter Keithly, president of the Toy Industry Association. “We didn’t agree on everything, but she was always fair.”

For the Youth Football Brain Safety initiative, the N.C.A.A., the N.F.L. and the players association kicked in a total of $1 million to pay for the helmet replacements. “The support of Chairman Tenenbaum and the C.P.S.C. played an important role in making our helmet replacement initiative a reality,” Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, said in a statement. “We really appreciated her personal involvement and the agency’s in the work to make our game better and safer.”

Yet the commission under Ms. Tenenbaum’s leadership has not been exempt from criticism. Some of the biggest complaints followed the decision by agency lawyers to hold Craig Zucker, the chief executive of the company that made Buckyballs, liable for the recall of the magnetic children’s toy, even after the company was dissolved. Manufacturers have argued that holding an individual responsible for a widespread, and expensive, recall sets a disturbing example, and would discourage companies from being open in their dealings with regulatory bodies.

Ms. Tenenbaum said she could not comment on the case because it was continuing.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, one of the smallest agencies in government, was created in 1972. With a budget of about $120 million and 530 employees, the agency annually monitors more than 15,000 imported and domestically made products. Before Ms. Tenenbaum took the reins, it had been increasingly criticized in the light of deaths and injuries that critics said were the result of the agency being too close to the industries it regulated.

Ms. Tenenbaum, a lawyer, had no product safety experience when she was nominated for the job by President Obama. She had come up through the Democratic ranks in South Carolina, a state dominated by Republicans, serving as a legislative staff member as well as the state’s superintendent of education. In 1994, she ran an unsuccessful primary campaign for lieutenant governor, and 10 years later lost to Jim DeMint, a Republican, in the race to replace Ernest Hollings, a Democrat who was retiring, in the Senate.

Before her arrival at the safety commission, the Bush administration had sought to ease what it considered costly rules that placed unnecessary burdens on businesses, and the agency’s budget was largely gutted. Staff was cut and safety initiatives were stalled or dropped.

In 2007, a Washington Post investigation found that Nancy Nord, who was then the agency’s acting chairwoman, and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, had taken dozens of industry-sponsored trips that were paid for in full or in part by trade associations or manufacturers of products that were regulated by the agency. Ms. Nord said the trips were legal.

Hulu Is Said to Pick a New Chief Executive

The owners of the online streaming service Hulu are preparing to appoint Mike Hopkins, a veteran of Fox Networks, to be the next chief executive.

Mr. Hopkins would succeed Andy Forssell, who has been the acting head of Hulu since the service’s founding chief executive, Jason Kilar, left at the beginning of the year. Before Mr. Forssell stepped into the top job, he drove Hulu’s original programming strategy by commissioning shows like “Battleground” and “The Awesomes.”

Mr. Hopkins, on the other hand, is a distribution executive with 15 years of experience negotiating carriage deals for FX and other cable channels owned by 21st Century Fox. Most recently he helped ensure that Fox Sports 1, the company’s new sports network, and FXX, a spinoff of FX, would be widely available through cable and satellite providers. His appointment may signal Hulu’s shift from producing Web shows of its own and toward a posture of support for traditional TV providers and their television network partners.

Such a move — which would make Hulu a hub for TV Everywhere, the concept that cable subscribers should be able to stream shows and channels whenever and wherever they want — was telegraphed three months ago when Hulu’s owners declined to sell the joint venture.

Two of the owners of Hulu, 21st Century Fox and the Walt Disney Company, declined to comment on Friday. (The third owner, NBCUniversal, gave up its voting rights when it was acquired by Comcast in 2011.) A Hulu spokeswoman also declined to comment.

But Mr. Hopkins’s hiring was reported by Bloomberg and Reuters and was confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of it who insisted on anonymity because Hulu’s staff had not been notified of the appointment yet.

Mr. Hopkins, who started at Fox in 1997, has been the president of distribution for Fox Networks for the last five years. His responsibilities include digital strategies for the group of channels, so he has deep knowledge of TV Everywhere and the hurdles that networks and distributors have faced in trying to live up to that name. Distributors have adopted differing approaches toward making shows available on demand to their subscribers, and so have various broadcasters and cable channels; the resulting inconsistencies are often cited as one of the reasons more subscribers aren’t taking advantage of what has been offered.

Hulu could ease the transition to TV Everywhere. Currently there are two versions of Hulu, a free one with a limited selection of TV shows and a paid one called Hulu Plus. The paid version — which makes it easy to use Hulu on big-screen TVs and other devices — has more than four million subscribers, proving that its technology could be used to power similar on-demand services from cable and satellite providers.

When Fox and Disney said they had decided not to sell Hulu in July, they announced a new investment of $750 million in the joint venture. The cash was earmarked for program acquisition, program development, marketing and technology. On the programming front, the service has been busy: last month it licensed a library of shows from the BBC and ordered a second season of “The Awesomes,” an animated comedy created by Seth Meyers. It is scheduled to start showing three more series of its own in the next four weeks.

Bits Blog: Samsung’s Mobile Chief Departs

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The Boss: Trek Bicycle’s Chief, on Lessons of the Night Shift

My father, Dick, was a runner and a biker. He started the company that I now run, the Trek Bicycle Corporation, in 1975, along with the owner of a bike shop in the area.

My high school was so small that there were only six students on the varsity basketball team. I was the sixth. I like to say I was the assistant coach because I spent so much time on the bench with our coach, Eric Walter. The passion that he had for the game and for playing one’s best was a huge influence.

I attended Boston University because it was the only school that accepted me out of the four to which I applied. The summer after my sophomore year, I worked the night shift in a plastics factory. The company made those candy cane-shaped plastic containers that are filled with candy and sold around the holidays. My job was to remove the red plastic tops from the molds. Returning home at 7 a.m. after my first night, I ran into my father drinking coffee before leaving for work. He asked me how I liked the job, and I told him it was horrible and I wasn’t going back. He turned to me and said, “You’re going back tonight, you’re going to work there for the summer, and you’ll enjoy it.”

That summer provided one of the best lessons of my life. I learned about hard work and making lemonade out of lemons. It may not have been the best job, but I made it a great one. I’d see how many tops I could remove each night, write down the number and try to beat it the next night. I brought business magazines to read during breaks.

After graduating in 1984 with a business degree, I joined Trek as a sales representative. My territory covered Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and parts of several other states. I drove my red Chevy Cavalier station wagon 60,000 miles a year. My boss once told me that the best sales reps drive on Sunday to be ready for Monday meetings, so I would do that.

Trek was not doing well at the time, and I heard complaints about quality and customer service on my stops. It was the greatest education ever; you don’t find out a lot when things are going well or if you sit in an office all day. I learned the value of happy customers.

I changed our operations so that if an order hadn’t shipped by 3 p.m. the day it arrived, the office staff would leave their desks and help the warehouse get the order out the door. I also instituted a process in which credits were issued within 24 hours.

After that, my dad put me in charge of sales and marketing. I was 24, so it was a big leap of faith on his part. In 1997, he made me president and C.E.O. of the company.

We had a run of three bad years, so we retooled the company, improved our products and focused on our international segment. We also instituted Kaizen, the continuous-improvement system, which made a big difference in our operations.

 My dad was very fit, but he died in 2008 shortly after heart surgery. He and I were best friends and had talked many times about me taking his place. Everyone at the company was prepared for it, too. But he left some big shoes to fill. His spirit lives on in everything we do.

DealBook: Next Microsoft Chief Should Pare the Menu

DealBook: Nasdaq Chief Defends Handling of Trading Halt

Another Shake-Up at NPR as Chief Steps Down

Gary E. Knell, the public radio organization’s chief for the last 20 months, announced on Monday that he would be leaving to run the National Geographic Society. It came as an unwelcome surprise to NPR staff members, given that Mr. Knell brought some desperately needed stability to the executive ranks when he was hired in late 2011.

Conflicts between past chief executives and the NPR board resulted in repeated shake-ups in the years leading to his arrival. On Monday, though, Mr. Knell and the board hurried to reassure public radio fans that his exit was because of something more mundane: a better job offer.

In an e-mail to the NPR staff, Mr. Knell said he had been approached by the National Geographic Society and “offered an opportunity that, after discussions with my family, I could not turn down.”

In a subsequent telephone interview, Mr. Knell said he had been prepared to renew his NPR contract, which expires in November. But then National Geographic called, and it was enticing for a number of reasons. One that was immediately suggested by observers on Monday was money: he will earn a significantly higher salary at the society. While that is true, he said his decision “wasn’t really driven by a financial equation.” What was most appealing about National Geographic, he said, was its size, its educational efforts and international scope.

At National Geographic, he will succeed John M. Fahey Jr., who has served as the society’s chief executive since 1998 (and who will remain its chairman). Mr. Knell is already one of the trustees of the nonprofit organization, which publishes National Geographic and other magazines, supports scientific research and expeditions and owns part of the commercial National Geographic Channel.

“The perfect person for this crucial role was right in our own backyard,” Jean N. Case, the co-chairwoman of the committee that searched for a new chief executive, said in a statement.

The society had about $600 million in income in 2011, according to tax filings, making it far bigger than NPR, which has a budget of about $180 million this year and is running a small deficit. The society also has twice as many employees.

While Mr. Knell’s departure from NPR is amicable by all accounts, it is disappointing to that organization’s board, which must once again search for a leader. Ken Stern, who was named chief executive in 2006, stepped down less than two years later; an interim head took over until NPR hired Vivian Schiller away from The New York Times to run the organization in 2009. She resigned two years after that, after back-to-back controversies involving the political views of an NPR analyst, Juan Williams, and two NPR fund-raising executives. Another interim head was appointed until Mr. Knell’s arrival in 2011 from the nonprofit Sesame Workshop.

Analysts have suggested that the revolving door has hindered NPR, which has had to delicately maintain relationships with its member stations across the country while expanding its presence on the Web. “NPR’s a vital journalism organization that seems to have more problems with its business side than its journalism side, and that hurts its reputation, because people don’t make that distinction,” said Alicia Shepard, who was NPR’s ombudsman between 2007 and 2011.

Over all, the organization has shown that it is adjusting to changes in consumer behavior; just last week it introduced a redesigned home page that looked a lot like a mobile app. The new home page also included a big new space for messages from sponsors, public media’s version of advertisers.

It may need more of those in the future. The organization has a $6 million deficit in the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, and it is forecast to run a deficit again next year. Mr. Knell has been working on a plan to help NPR achieve a balanced budget in 2015. “We hope to present a strategic plan to the board soon, before my departure,” he said on Monday, declining to comment further.

Mr. Knell said that among his proudest achievements at NPR were “bringing institutional donors back” and “helping calm some of the waters on Capitol Hill.” (Calls for cuts to government subsidies for NPR and PBS have quieted in the last year.) By other measures — like NPR’s relations with member stations and its reputation for innovation — the organization has made steady improvement under Mr. Knell. “We’ve made a lot of progress in a short amount of time,” he said, suggesting that he felt as if he had fit four years of work into his two years.

He managed to irritate some public radio supporters during his tenure by ending “Talk of the Nation,” the midday call-in show, and throwing NPR’s weight behind a news broadcast called “Here and Now” instead. The change took effect this summer, and more than 300 stations now carry “Here and Now,” about 100 fewer than the number that carried “Talk.”

Kit Jensen, the chairwoman of the NPR board, said she expected a “fairly quick” succession process.

Ms. Jensen called Mr. Knell a “stellar C.E.O.” in a telephone interview, saying, “Certainly, we wish his decision had been otherwise, but we respect what that decision is.”

The board could turn to one of Mr. Knell’s top lieutenants, like Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s executive vice president and chief content officer, or Margaret Low Smith, the senior vice president for news. Or it could look outside the organization — the same thing it has done the last three times.

Privatization Chief Quits After Another Misstep In Big Greek Asset Sales

One of the ways Greece plans to dig itself out of debt is through the sale of state-owned assets. But that effort has been besieged by missteps.

The latest involved Stelios Stavridis, the chairman of the government privatization agency, who had overseen one of the country’s first big asset sales — a one-third stake in the state gambling company, OPAP, for 652 million euros. But then he hitched a ride to a vacation spot on the private jet of a Greek oil magnate involved in the deal.

Government officials insisted that Mr. Stavridis’s ouster from the privatization agency, Taiped, was “for ethical reasons” and would not upset the country’s state sell-off effort. But the privatization program has suffered from political upheaval and delays and has fallen far short of the revenue targets set by Greece’s so-called troika of foreign creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The Greek finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, on Sunday sought Mr. Stavridis’s resignation from Taiped after a newspaper quoted the chairman as saying he had traveled last week on the Lear jet of the oil and shipping oligarch Dimitris Melissanidis, a major stakeholder in the Greek-Czech consortium Emma Delta, which agreed to buy the OPAP stake in May.

The contract was signed Aug. 12 after much wrangling over the details. A few hours later, Mr. Stavridis, a 65-year-old Swiss-trained engineer, joined the oil magnate on his plane, which dropped Mr. Stavridis on Cephalonia, an island in the Ionian Sea where he spends his summer vacations. “Melissanidis, who was traveling to France, offered to take me with him to accommodate me,” Mr. Stavridis was quoted as telling the Proto Thema newspaper, which published a photograph of him, smiling, sitting next to a flight attendant.

Speaking to the Greek private television channel Skai after his firing on Monday, Mr. Stavridis defended his decision to fly on Mr. Melissanidis’s jet, noting that the trip had come long after the OPAP deal was completed. He referred to “hypocrisy” in Greek society which, he said, was interested in “the facade rather than the essence.”

“I am not a monk and I won’t hide,” said Mr. Stavridis, who founded Piscines Ideales, one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of swimming pools in 1991. More recently, he was head of the Athens water board, Eydap, which is also in the country’s privatizations portfolio.

Less than six months ago, Mr. Stavridis’s predecessor, Takis Athanasopoulos, was accused of a breach of faith during a previous stint at the head of the state electricity board. Prosecutors accused him of commissioning a power station in central Greece even though he knew it could not operate profitably.

The main left-wing opposition party, Syriza, which has vowed to reverse all privatizations if it comes to power, said Taiped was “a tool of the troika” whose goal was “the biggest sell-off of state wealth that Europe has seen since the era of East Germany.” In a statement on Monday, Syriza described the Stavridis affair as “the first clear admission of the dirty relationship between the government of the memorandum and business interests,” referring to the Greek deals for foreign loans.

The troika has urged Athens to speed up state sell-offs and to step up tax collection to raise much-needed money. But revenue targets have been revised downward several times. The original target of 50 billion euros by 2016 was later changed to 19 billion euros, then to 15 billion euros. Since last year, the troika has focused on annual targets. But Taiped is expected to fall 1 billion euros short of its 2.5 billion euro target for 2013.

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Siemens to Oust Chief After String of Setbacks That Prompted Profit Warning

FRANKFURT — The supervisory board of Siemens, one of Germany’s largest companies, said that it would fire its chief executive at a meeting on Wednesday and replace him with an insider following a string of problems that led to a profit warning last week.

Peter Löscher, an Austrian who has been chief executive of the electronics and engineering giant since 2007, is taking the blame for a series of missteps that have plagued the company during the last year, including a late delivery of high-speed trains for the German national railroad and delays in completing offshore wind turbine projects.

The German news media reported that Joe Kaeser, a member of Siemens’s managing board and its chief financial officer, would be most likely to replace Mr. Löscher, but a company spokesman said on Sunday that he could not confirm the reports. In a statement Saturday, Siemens, based in Munich, said its supervisory board would name another member of the company’s executive board as chief executive, but it did not say who.

Siemens’s fortunes have consequences for the German economy as a whole because it is one of the country’s largest employers, with about 120,000 workers, and because it is something of a bellwether for the country’s industrial sector.

Along with automobiles, the German economy is based on the production of high-priced goods that are sold to governments and corporations. Siemens’s broad array of products includes gear for power generation, trains and other transportation equipment, and medical devices like X-ray scanners. Problems at Siemens are potentially a bad omen for the country.

On Thursday, Siemens shares plunged 6 percent after the company said it would not meet its profit goals for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Siemens did not give a detailed explanation for the expected shortfall, attributing it to “lower market expectations.” But it appeared to reflect a combination of weaker-than-expected economic growth in crucial markets as well as management mistakes.

The profit warning fed concern that demand for German exports from China and other developing markets may no longer be strong enough to compensate for the weak European economy. Sales in the United States, where Siemens has 60,000 employees, also appear to be falling short of expectations despite the recovering growth in America.

Germany has weathered the euro zone crisis better than other countries because its machinery and engineering divisions have been able to tap developing markets, especially China. But recently the Chinese economy has been cooling, while Europe remains in recession.

Siemens had already reported a 7 percent decline in sales during the first three months of 2013, to 18 billion euros, or about $24 billion. On Thursday, the company is scheduled to announce earnings for the quarter that ended June 30.

Mr. Kaeser, reported as the likely replacement for Mr. Löscher, is a 56-year-old Siemens veteran credited with keeping the company on a steady course after the previous chief executive, Klaus Kleinfeld, resigned under pressure in 2007. Mr. Kleinfeld is now chief executive of the aluminum producer Alcoa.

Mr. Löscher, 55, was the latest in a line of Siemens chiefs who have tried to focus the sprawling company on its most profitable businesses and make it easier to manage. Under Mr. Löscher, Siemens spun off its Osram lighting unit, and this month it sold its half of a joint venture with Nokia that supplies equipment for mobile telecommunication networks.

Those moves raised money and simplified the company but were not enough to compensate for other problems, including delays in delivering high-speed ICE trains to Deutsche Bahn, the German railway.

Members of the supervisory board met informally on Saturday and will make the management changes formal at a regular meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

Bloomberg Media Recruits a New Chief From the Atlantic

On Monday, Bloomberg will announce that Mr. Smith, the president of Atlantic Media, will be named chief executive of the Bloomberg Media Group. He will report to Daniel L. Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg. Andrew Lack, who managed the media division for five years, will become chairman.

After joining The Atlantic in 2007, Mr. Smith developed a reputation as an aggressive promoter of digital media who was able to reconfigure a 156-year-old magazine into a genuine multiplatform property.

In a letter to the staff about Mr. Smith’s departure, David Bradley, the owner of Atlantic Media, credited Mr. Smith with bringing the company to profitability for the first time under his ownership; doubling revenue; and creating a number of successful digital start-ups, including The Atlantic Wire and Quartz.

His quick results at the Atlantic Media Company drew the attention of executives at Bloomberg, who began talking to him at the end of last year.

“We know that every part of media is being disrupted by technology, and we need someone who understands that,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “Justin can drive things forward here because he has an incredibly digital sensibility with a unique understanding of the confluence of journalism and multiple platforms.”

The move will give Mr. Smith significant scale and a connection with Bloomberg’s lucrative terminal business, which produces revenue that allows the company to invest aggressively in media properties. The company has had success in moving from a linear television business to a more diverse model of video distribution, while the acquisition of Businessweek gave Bloomberg an editorial cachet it historically lacked.

Even with those successes, the media division has long been treated as a marketing amenity for subscribers to the terminal business. Despite its recent growth, the media division has struggled to gain a consumer base for its properties, which include television, print, radio, mobile, events and digital media.

The company was heavily criticized several months ago after revelations that some of its reporters had used the Bloomberg terminals to gain access to data about its users, prompting Eric T. Schneiderman, attorney general of New York, to begin looking into the practice, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The company’s assets — its success, its size and a hard-driving business culture — might make bringing about change difficult. But Mr. Smith said the fit was a natural one.

“If you look at the entrepreneurial roots of this company and its history of market disruption and innovation, I think it is the best positioned media company there is,” he said. The theory that large companies cannot innovate, he said, “has not been historically true at Bloomberg.” He added, “This is a company where you can take big risks with longer horizons.”

Before joining Atlantic Media, Mr. Smith opened the American edition of the British newsmagazine The Week in 2001. Before that, he was head of corporate strategy for The Economist in London, Hong Kong and New York. He also founded Breaking Media, a collection of Web sites that includes Above the Law, Dealbreaker and Fashionista.

Mr. Smith has no experience in the television business and said he would work closely with Mr. Lack in that area. He said he was interested in creating new products, including ones aimed at the global market, while bringing additional digital muscle to Bloomberg’s existing businesses.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, met Mr. Smith at one of Atlantic Media’s conferences and they became friends.

“How many people have really managed to be successful in digital media?” Mr. Schmidt said in a phone call. “Everyone has tried and few have been successful. Justin is one of them. He is moving very fast, but this is the next logical step. It’s a serious gain for Bloomberg.”

DealBook: Under New Chief, a Feistier S.E.C. Emerges

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMary Jo White, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

First the Securities and Exchange Commission rejected a settlement with a high-flying hedge fund manager, Philip A. Falcone. Then it charged another billionaire trader, Steven A. Cohen. By late Friday afternoon, it had accused one of the nation’s largest cities, Miami, of securities fraud.

It was a busy 24 hours for the S.E.C., the federal regulator once blamed for missing the warning signs of the financial crisis and the vast Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Bernard L. Madoff.

The flurry of moves appeared to signal that the agency was striking a harder line with Wall Street under its new chairwoman, Mary Jo White. While it is still early in her tenure, and the agency faces lingering criticism for its close ties to Wall Street, Ms. White has taken several steps to crack down on financial fraud.

“They’re now demonstrating an aggressiveness that is highly unusual,” said Thomas A. Sporkin, who spent nearly 20 years in the S.E.C’s enforcement unit until last year, when he moved to the law firm Buckley Sandler. “It’s rare to see a day like today.”

When Ms. White was nominated in January, some politicians and consumer groups expressed concerns about her connections to Wall Street. A former federal prosecutor turned defense lawyer, Ms. White has repeatedly spun through the revolving door connecting government and private practice. During her confirmation, several questioned whether Ms. White, who spent the last decade representing big banks like JPMorgan Chase and UBS, could have conflicts of interest.

Her recent actions have started to assuage some concerns. Already, Ms. White has moved to address a central criticism of the agency: that it allows defendants to neither “admit nor deny” wrongdoing when reaching settlements. The leaders of the S.E.C. enforcement unit detailed the policy shift in a memo last month, saying there might be cases that “justify requiring the defendant’s admission of allegations in our complaint or other acknowledgment of the alleged misconduct as part of any settlement.”

“It’s welcome news for the American people desperate for a tougher S.E.C.,” said Dennis M. Kelleher, who runs Better Markets, an advocacy group critical of Wall Street. He said, however, that the agency still had a high bar to prove it could be a tough enforcer. “Two hedge fund cases are good, but not good enough,” he said.

Steve Marcus/ReutersThe S.E.C. rejected a settlement in its civil lawsuit against Philip A. Falcone, chief executive of Harbinger Capital Partners.

A preliminary settlement with Mr. Falcone had been collapsing for weeks, people close to the S.E.C. said, as Ms. White and the agency’s other commissioners questioned whether it was too lax. On Thursday, the agency’s commissioners rejected the settlement, a rare move that happens only once or twice a year.

Moments later, the S.E.C. notified Mr. Falcone and his hedge fund, Harbinger Capital Partners, that the agency had rejected “the previously disclosed agreement in principle,” according to a public filing his company made on Friday. The charges stemmed from accusations that Mr. Falcone had manipulated the market, used hedge fund assets to pay his own taxes and secretly favored select customers at the expense of others.

The S.E.C.’s rejection of the settlement — a move that will prompt the agency to either negotiate a tougher penalty or take Mr. Falcone to trial — suggested that its preliminary deal did not match the gravity of the crime. The deal, announced in May by Mr. Falcone, came with an $18 million penalty from the S.E.C., a rounding error to a hedge fund billionaire. Mr. Falcone was set to personally pay $4 million of the penalty, according to people briefed on the matter, while the fund’s management company would have paid the rest.

While the deal also included at least a two-year ban from raising new capital, that punishment came with a number of caveats. And in a moral victory for Mr. Falcone, the deal also omitted a common provision barring defendants from committing future violations with fraudulent intent, raising concerns that the S.E.C.’s results fell short of its ambitions.

For a time, the S.E.C. was questioning whether to sanction Mr. Cohen. The agency spent nearly a decade investigating his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, and even brought charges against several employees. But Mr. Cohen was not accused of wrongdoing. That changed on Friday, when the S.E.C. accused him of “failing to supervise” employees.

The action, filed as an administrative proceeding at the agency rather than as a lawsuit in federal court, delivers a serious blow to Mr. Cohen. The agency is seeking to bar him from overseeing outside investor funds, a death knell to a hedge fund manager.

It is unusual for the S.E.C. to pursue a case against someone of Mr. Cohen’s stature without formally accusing him of insider trading or fraud. The charge of failing to properly supervise is similar to what other regulators have done in a lawsuit against Jon S. Corzine, who led MF Global during the brokerage firm’s collapse two years ago.

In its charging document on Friday, the S.E.C. says Mr. Cohen failed to halt two of his portfolio managers from trading on confidential information. The two SAC employees, who both face criminal charges, were swept up in a broad federal investigation into insider trading.

One of the portfolio managers, Mathew Martoma, is accused of improperly acting on data about a clinical drug trial in 2008. The other, Michael S. Steinberg, is accused of trading on confidential information about Dell’s financial performance that same year.

Both men have denied the charges and face separate trials that begin in November. An SAC spokesman said that the S.E.C.’s action had no merit. “Steve Cohen acted appropriately at all times and will fight this charge vigorously,” the spokesman said.

The case against Miami came just hours after the action against Mr. Cohen was announced. The S.E.C. accused the city of giving misleading information about its finances to investors in 2009 in an effort to make its municipal bonds more attractive.

The agency also said the city broke a cease-and-desist order it signed in 2003 after facing similar charges. George Canellos, co-director of the S.E.C.’s enforcement unit, said in a statement that the city’s conduct was “all the more appalling and unacceptable” because of the earlier problems.

A lawyer for Miami, Ivan Harris, said the city would fight the charges in court.

DealBook: Under New Chief, a Feistier S.E.C. Emerges

Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMary Jo White, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

First the Securities and Exchange Commission rejected a settlement with a high-flying hedge fund manager, Philip A. Falcone. Then it charged another billionaire trader, Steven A. Cohen. By late Friday afternoon, it had accused one of the nation’s largest cities, Miami, of securities fraud.

It was a busy 24 hours for the S.E.C., the federal regulator once blamed for missing the warning signs of the financial crisis and the vast Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Bernard L. Madoff.

The flurry of moves appeared to signal that the agency was striking a harder line with Wall Street under its new chairwoman, Mary Jo White. While it is still early in her tenure, and the agency faces lingering criticism for its close ties to Wall Street, Ms. White has taken several steps to crack down on financial fraud.

“They’re now demonstrating an aggressiveness that is highly unusual,” said Thomas A. Sporkin, who spent nearly 20 years in the S.E.C’s enforcement unit until last year, when he moved to the law firm Buckley Sandler. “It’s rare to see a day like today.”

When Ms. White was nominated in January, some politicians and consumer groups expressed concerns about her connections to Wall Street. A former federal prosecutor turned defense lawyer, Ms. White has repeatedly spun through the revolving door connecting government and private practice. During her confirmation, several questioned whether Ms. White, who spent the last decade representing big banks like JPMorgan Chase and UBS, could have conflicts of interest.

Her recent actions have started to assuage some concerns. Already, Ms. White has moved to address a central criticism of the agency: that it allows defendants to neither “admit nor deny” wrongdoing when reaching settlements. The leaders of the S.E.C. enforcement unit detailed the policy shift in a memo last month, saying there might be cases that “justify requiring the defendant’s admission of allegations in our complaint or other acknowledgment of the alleged misconduct as part of any settlement.”

“It’s welcome news for the American people desperate for a tougher S.E.C.,” said Dennis M. Kelleher, who runs Better Markets, an advocacy group critical of Wall Street. He said, however, that the agency still had a high bar to prove it could be a tough enforcer. “Two hedge fund cases are good, but not good enough,” he said.

Steve Marcus/ReutersThe S.E.C. rejected a settlement in its civil lawsuit against Philip A. Falcone, chief executive of Harbinger Capital Partners.

A preliminary settlement with Mr. Falcone had been collapsing for weeks, people close to the S.E.C. said, as Ms. White and the agency’s other commissioners questioned whether it was too lax. On Thursday, the agency’s commissioners rejected the settlement, a rare move that happens only once or twice a year.

Moments later, the S.E.C. notified Mr. Falcone and his hedge fund, Harbinger Capital Partners, that the agency had rejected “the previously disclosed agreement in principle,” according to a public filing his company made on Friday. The charges stemmed from accusations that Mr. Falcone had manipulated the market, used hedge fund assets to pay his own taxes and secretly favored select customers at the expense of others.

The S.E.C.’s rejection of the settlement — a move that will prompt the agency to either negotiate a tougher penalty or take Mr. Falcone to trial — suggested that its preliminary deal did not match the gravity of the crime. The deal, announced in May by Mr. Falcone, came with an $18 million penalty from the S.E.C., a rounding error to a hedge fund billionaire. Mr. Falcone was set to personally pay $4 million of the penalty, according to people briefed on the matter, while the fund’s management company would have paid the rest.

While the deal also included at least a two-year ban from raising new capital, that punishment came with a number of caveats. And in a moral victory for Mr. Falcone, the deal also omitted a common provision barring defendants from committing future violations with fraudulent intent, raising concerns that the S.E.C.’s results fell short of its ambitions.

For a time, the S.E.C. was questioning whether to sanction Mr. Cohen. The agency spent nearly a decade investigating his hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, and even brought charges against several employees. But Mr. Cohen was not accused of wrongdoing. That changed on Friday, when the S.E.C. accused him of “failing to supervise” employees.

The action, filed as an administrative proceeding at the agency rather than as a lawsuit in federal court, delivers a serious blow to Mr. Cohen. The agency is seeking to bar him from overseeing outside investor funds, a death knell to a hedge fund manager.

It is unusual for the S.E.C. to pursue a case against someone of Mr. Cohen’s stature without formally accusing him of insider trading or fraud. The charge of failing to properly supervise is similar to what other regulators have done in a lawsuit against Jon S. Corzine, who led MF Global during the brokerage firm’s collapse two years ago.

In its charging document on Friday, the S.E.C. says Mr. Cohen failed to halt two of his portfolio managers from trading on confidential information. The two SAC employees, who both face criminal charges, were swept up in a broad federal investigation into insider trading.

One of the portfolio managers, Mathew Martoma, is accused of improperly acting on data about a clinical drug trial in 2008. The other, Michael S. Steinberg, is accused of trading on confidential information about Dell’s financial performance that same year.

Both men have denied the charges and face separate trials that begin in November. An SAC spokesman said that the S.E.C.’s action had no merit. “Steve Cohen acted appropriately at all times and will fight this charge vigorously,” the spokesman said.

The case against Miami came just hours after the action against Mr. Cohen was announced. The S.E.C. accused the city of giving misleading information about its finances to investors in 2009 in an effort to make its municipal bonds more attractive.

The agency also said the city broke a cease-and-desist order it signed in 2003 after facing similar charges. George Canellos, co-director of the S.E.C.’s enforcement unit, said in a statement that the city’s conduct was “all the more appalling and unacceptable” because of the earlier problems.

A lawyer for Miami, Ivan Harris, said the city would fight the charges in court.

Aichele Officially Out as Chief of Staff, Gromis-Baker In

Governor Tom Corbett announced late Wednesday that Stephen S. Aichele has officially stepped down as chief of staff and will be replaced by Republican strategist Leslie Gromis-Baker.