Gareth Rees, the Financial Reporting Council's (FRC) executive counsel since 2012 and executive director of enforcement since 2015, is joining King & Spalding as a partner in London.

Rees is expected to start at King & Spalding in the next few months and will be the firm's fourth QC.

His practice focuses on fraud including bribery, sanctions, insider dealing and money laundering, as well as regulatory and disciplinary matters.

While at the FRC, Rees has been involved in bringing numerous multi-million pound penalties for audit firms. One of the biggest of these cases saw PwC being fined £5.1m last month for failings in its work on RSM Tenon, a professional services group put into administration in 2013.

His departure comes after the government handed the FRC greater responsibility.

Business secretary Greg Clark confirmed last week that the FRC will now oversee the establishment of a voluntary set of governance principles for large private companies. The measures are designed to crack down on bad business practice in the wake of the collapse of BHS last year.

Recent similar moves include the previous head of the fraud division of the Serious Fraud Office, Stuart Alford QC, joining Latham & Watkins as a partner in the firm's litigation and trial department.

Other recent hires for King & Spalding include Ropes & Gray London finance partners Mark Wesseldine and Fergus Wheeler.

King & Spalding also recently made headlines after its white-collar partner Christopher Wray, who is based in Washington and Atlanta, took over from James Comey as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. It emerged that Wray earned a salary of roughly $6.3m (£4.9m) per year while at the firm.

Other lawyers currently on the board of the FRC include former Clifford Chance managing partner David Childs. In 2014, he was appointed to chair the Conduct Committee, which reviews the financial accounts of about 200 companies a year and the practices and procedures of auditors.

The FRC and King & Spalding declined to comment.