Mary Schapiro is Obama’s pick for SEC chief, sources say
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President-elect Barack Obama plans to name Mary Schapiro, chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal are reporting:
From Bloomberg:
Obama will formally announce plans to nominate Schapiro, 53, tomorrow, according to a top Democrat and a securities law expert who have discussed the selection with the president-elect’s transition team. The former SEC commissioner who also headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would be the first permanent female chairman of Wall Street’s top regulator.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Schapiro will take over an agency whose reputation has been tarnished by its failure to detect Bernie Madoff’s alleged $50 billion fraud and to prevent the collapse of investment banks Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. The SEC’s relevance and competence will be scrutinized as Congress weighs overhauling financial regulation. Finra, which is overseen by the SEC, inspects more than 5,000 U.S. brokerages, writes rules for those selling securities and imposes sanctions. Schapiro spearheaded Finra’s creation in July 2007 from a merger of the National Assn. of Securities Dealers with the New York Stock Exchange’s regulatory arm. Schapiro, whose SEC biography indicates she is politically independent, became an SEC commissioner in 1988 and was named acting chairman in 1993. Former President Bill Clinton named her to lead the CFTC, the agency that regulates daily trades in commodities, in 1994.
Schapiro would replace Christopher Cox, the former Orange County congressman who was named the agency’s chairman in 2005 by President Bush. Cox’s pet project has been improved disclosure for investors, including the adoption of so-called XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, in company financial reports.
But he has been the target of stinging criticism for the agency’s handling -- or lack of handling -- of the financial crisis this year. In September, then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain called on Bush to fire Cox for being ‘asleep at the switch.’
And that was before the major embarrassment of the Madoff debacle.
-- Tom Petruno
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