Gary Gensler Sworn In as SEC Chairman
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said she hopes to work with Gensler on building a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency.
Gary Gensler was sworn in Saturday as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
During his swearing in by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., in Baltimore, Gensler said: “I feel incredibly privileged to join the SEC’s team of remarkable public servants. 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.”
Gensler was nominated to head the SEC by President Joe Biden on Feb. 3 and confirmed by the Senate Wednesday.
In a statement, Gensler also thanked Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee “for her leadership the last few months and all of my fellow Commissioners for being so generous with their time and advice.”
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, a Republican, said in video tweet Friday that she hopes to work with Gensler on building a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency. “That’s something that Gary comes to the SEC with a lot of experience in,” Peirce said, noting his teaching of blockchain and finance at MIT.
Gensler, Peirce continued, “also has a lot of experience in regulation.”
With Gensler’s “combination of knowledge of regulation in the capital markets and knowledge of crypto we should be able to build a good regulatory framework for crypto,” Peirce said.
From 2017 to 2019, Gensler served as chair of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission.
He was chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, leading the Obama administration’s reform of the $400 trillion swaps market.
Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner in the Mergers & Acquisition department, headed the firm’s Media Group, led fixed income and currency trading in Asia, and was co-head of Finance, responsible for the firm’s worldwide Controllers and Treasury efforts.
A native of Baltimore, Gensler earned his undergraduate degree in economics in 1978 and his MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in 1979.