Obama to Tap Mary Schapiro to be SEC Chair

News reports last night indicated that Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) head Mary Schapiro will be chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to replace Christopher Cox as the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We understand Obama will make the announcement official today.

If approved by the Senate, Schapiro would be the first permanent female Chair of the SEC, which is awesome. Her biography of course is super-impressive. She was a commissioner of the SEC in the 1980s, she headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (which current Chairman Cox thinks should be combined with the SEC). Interestingly, her SEC biography describes her as politically independent.

These are rather tough times for the SEC. Chairman Cox has taken heat for missing the oversight of the subprime debacle, and now has had to take to the microphones to essentially apologize for missing numerous opportunities, going back quite a number of years, to respond to clear evidence of potential wrongdoing in Bernard Madoff’s brokerage firm.

Schapiro has a reputation for believing that the key distinguishing characteristic of our securities markets is and should be their transparency. Does this mean more regulation? Probably. Will it be good, needed, targeted regulation rather than a dartboard approach? We can only hope.

Coming soon: some thoughts on Madoff and Dreier (I know you are all excited)….

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