By Kara Brockmeyer, Andrew Ceresney, Robert Kaplan, Julie Riewe and Jonathan Tuttle ( March 18, 2019, 4:42 PM EDT) -- For many years, there has been an active debate among the commissioners of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the appropriateness of imposing corporate penalties on issuers of securities. Republican appointees traditionally have taken the view that corporate penalties harm shareholders and are only appropriate — if at all — in cases where the corporation received some corporate benefit as a result of the misconduct. Democratic appointees typically have focused on the deterrent value of penalties and advocated penalties more broadly, even when there has been no corporate benefit....