President-elect Joe Biden’s transition is continuing apace, with the announcement of numerous “agency review teams,” including one whose focus includes the SEC.
The agency review teams are tasked with understanding agency operations and ensuring a transfer of power, according to the Biden transition website, and can offer a speculative glance at how a Biden administration will approach administrative changes as it settles into the White House. There has been consistent speculation about regulatory shifts pertaining to the financial services industry in a Biden administration, including at the SEC and the Department of Labor.
The “Federal Reserve, Banking and Securities Regulators” team will include analyzing the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve and the National Credit Union Administration. The team will be led by Gary Gensler, who served as the head of the CFTC under President Barack Obama. He is viewed positively among Democrats for his aggressive approach in regard to Wall Street, his quick adoption of Dodd-Frank at the commission and for his oversight of the prosecution of investment banks who rigged Libor, according to Reuters.
The team also includes Reena Aggarwal, the Robert E. McDonough Professor of Finance and director at the Georgetown Center for Financial Markets and Policy, and Dennis Kelleher, the co-founder, president and CEO of Better Markets.
Satyam Khanna, a resident fellow at the NYU School of Law's Institute for Corporate Governance and Finance, is also joining the team. In addition to his work at NYU, Khanna serves on the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee and previously worked as counsel to former Commissioner Robert Jackson Jr. Damon A. Silvers, the AFL-CIO’s director of policy and special counsel, will be on board, in addition to Lev Menand, who served as senior advisor to the deputy secretary of the treasury near the end of the Obama administration.
Biden, who will succeed President Donald Trump, will take the oath of office to become the nation’s 46th president on Inauguration Day, scheduled for Jan. 20, 2021.