Gary Gensler
Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission
Gary Gensler was born in October 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland. He earned both a B.A. and M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
He joined Goldman Sachs, where he spent 18 years. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets. He was confirmed by the Senate, serving in that position for 18 months, when President Clinton nominated him to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance.
At the end of President Clinton’s administration, Gensler joined the staff of the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee as a senior advisor. He was nominated by President Barack Obama to be chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Company, confirmed by the Senate, and served from 2009-2014. He would later serve as the chairman of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission.
Gensler has spent time as a professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management, at MIT Sloan School of Management, and as co-director of MIT’s Fintech and Senior Advisor to the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency initiative.
He was nominated by President Joe Biden to be the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and confirmed by the Senate to a 5-year term that began April 17, 2021.
Gensler is a widower with three daughters. He is a marathon runner and avid mountain climber.
In the News…
In January, day traders drove up the share price of GameStop, initiating a “tight squeeze” on hedge funds that had been betting against the video game retailer. From around $20 in early January, the stock shot up to $480 at its peak before falling back down to $40, all in a matter of weeks.
In prepared remarks to the House Committee on Financial Services, the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, outlined his concerns around the GameStop frenzy, and pointed to a number of specific factors that set the groundwork for the trading episode.
He highlighted seven factors he believed were at play amid the mania. Gamification (a term he used about aggressive tactics to lure the young and inexperienced investor), the payment for order flow from wholesalers to brokers, market structure where just seven firms dominate the wholesaling group, short selling and transparency, social media exploitation, market infrasrtucture and the trade settlement cycle, and system-wide risks as firms failed to meet collateral requirements set by clearing houses.
The question he posed to lawmakers was, “When new technologies come along and change the face of finance, how do we continue to achieve our core public policy goals and ensure that markets work for everyday investors?”
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Chairman Gensler today? You can let him know at:
The Honorable Gary Gensler, Chairman
Securities and Exchange Commission
100 F St. NE
Washington, DC 20549
