A top regulator under President Obama may soon take over the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Gary Gensler MIT Sloan School of Management Professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management

President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Gary Gensler to be the next SEC chair, unnamed sources reportedly told Reuters and other publications. Gensler is professor of the practice of global economics and management at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and he's been leading the incoming administration's financial industry oversight transition planning.

SEC commissioner Elad Roisman took over last month as acting chairman after the departure of chairman Jay Clayton.

Back in the Obama administration, when Biden was Vice President, Gensler led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Under him, the CFTC rescinded a rule exempting SEC-registered mutual funds using futures and other commodities-tied investing products from also registering with the CTFC, a move for which trade groups sued the CFTC. Gensler also received one of columnist Chuck Jaffe's lump of coal awards and was rumored to be a contender for Treasury Secretary.

An alumnus twice over of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and a Baltimore native, Gensler spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs before entering the public sector, becoming Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton administration. Later, he was a Senate staffer who helped write Sarbanes-Oxley and then was picked by Obama to lead the CFTC. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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