WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden is expected to elect Gary Gensler, a former financial regulator and executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the decision.
Mr. Gensler’s nomination would have pleased the Liberal Democrats, who cheered the former regulator’s harsh approach to the rule-making process during the Obama administration when he led the Dodd-Frank derivatives market review of 2010 and oversaw enforcement actions against investment banks accused of manipulating reference interest rates.
The election of Mr Gensler, who declined to comment, was not final and could continue to change, people said.
As head of the Commission for the Future Trading of Goods, from 2009 to 2014, Mr Gensler developed a reputation among his colleagues for simple tactics, while trying to create a regulatory framework for derivatives, a multi-billion dollar market, federal oversight. By the time he left the commission, the established rules were largely complete, years before other regulators ended their post-crisis work.
It was a surprising turnaround for former Goldman executive, who previously resisted requests for additional regulation of derivatives when he served in the Treasury Department under President Clinton. The decision not to strictly regulate derivative financial instruments from the 1990s was blamed for contributing to the financial crisis a decade later.