Gary Gensler has been sworn in as the new chair of the
Securities and Exchange Commission, replacing the acting chair,
Elad Roisman. President Biden nominated him on Feb. 3, and the Senate confirmed his nomination on April 14.
Gensler formerly led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from 2009 to 2014, and is seen as someone who will be more aggressive toward, and less forgiving of, regulated entities—banks, brokers, funds and public companies—than the previous SEC head, Jay Clayton. During his tenure at the CFTC, Gensler oversaw a raft of new regulations in response to the financial crisis, as well as the prosecution of big banks for their role in the
LIBOR rigging scandal. Most recently, he was a professor of the practice of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-director of MIT’s Fintech@CSAIL, and senior adviser to the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative. From 2017 to 2019, he served as chair of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission. Prior to entering government, he was a Goldman Sachs partner.
“I feel incredibly privileged to join the SEC’s team of remarkable public servants,” Gensler said. “As Chair, every day I will be animated by our mission: protecting investors, facilitating capital formation, and promoting fair, orderly, and efficient markets. It is that mission that has helped make American capital markets the most robust in the world.”