A better understanding of the link between a firm’s financial status and its regulated performance can help to improve the design of regulatory regimes and lead to more efficient regulatory structures. To date, however, the literature investigating this link has not considered the role that regulatory enforcement plays in determining how financial status affects performance. This paper analyzes how regulatory enforcement affects the relationship between financial status and the safety performance of regulated firms. It examines a particular form of safety performance, namely, the environmental performance of companies regulated under environmental protection laws. In particular, our study explores this effect in the context of the regulation of water pollution using data on wastewater discharges from U.S. chemical manufacturing facilities for the years 1995 to 2001. The results suggest that enforcement in general can play an important role in shaping the effects of financial status on safety performance.