Gensler, who served as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission (CFTC) from 2009 to 2014, will work with a team of
policy experts focused on banking and markets regulators, such
as the CFTC, Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange
Commission, as part of the usual agency review process
undertaken by an incoming administrations, the person said.
Gensler did not immediately respond to a request for comment on
Friday evening. A spokesperson for Biden's transition team
declined to comment.
The decision to appoint Gensler was likely to please many
Democrats who applauded his tough stance on Wall Street under
former President Barack Obama.
As CFTC chair, he led creation of key swaps rules mandated by
Congress following the 2007-2009 financial crisis, developing a
reputation as a hard-headed operator who was not afraid to
ruffle feathers.
His efforts put the CFTC well ahead on the implementation of the
2010 Dodd-Frank reform law. Other regulators are still
implementing the law's rules a decade later.
A former Goldman Sachs banker and currently a professor at MIT
Sloan School of Management, Gensler also oversaw the prosecution
of big investment banks for rigging Libor, the benchmark for
trillions of dollars in lending worldwide.
Biden's team has also tapped KeyBank NA executive Don Graves to
work on a broader economic agency review, the same person said.
Graves could not immediately be reached for comment but on his
LinkedIn page describes himself as a counselor to Biden.
Before joining KeyBank in 2017, Graves worked in the Obama
administration Biden's director of domestic and economic policy.
Before that he was executive director of Obama's jobs council,
according to his LinkedIn.
Biden, who leads incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in
the key battleground states, according to several television
networks, was accused of being too cozy with Wall Street as a
senator and later as Obama’s vice president. He has said
relatively little on financial reform more broadly.
His appointees are expected to prioritize policies on which
Democrats broadly agree - boosting consumer protections and
measures to help tackle racial injustice, diversity, wealth
inequality and climate change.
One area Biden has focused on are rules that promote lending to
low-income communities, which he has pledged to expand. He has
also pledged to crack down on credit reporting agencies which
are criticized for harming consumers with inaccurate reports and
by focusing on scoring factors that disadvantage minorities.
(Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by David Gregorio and
Cynthia Osterman)
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