Candidates for SEC Chair Being Considered Carefully for New Policy

Key Points:

• Richard Farley and Norm Champ are leading candidates for SEC chair, along with other contenders like Dan Gallagher and Mark Uyeda.
• President-elect Trump’s transition team is in talks with potential candidates, but a decision may take weeks.

Several names are doing the rounds that may replace Gary Gensler as chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Read more: Robinhood CLO Dan Gallagher Generates Excitement As Potential New SEC Chair

Potential Candidates for SEC Chair Emerge

According to Bloomberg, Richard Farley of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel and Norm Champ of Kirkland & Ellis are among the candidates for SEC chair.

Farley has represented investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and UBS, in several major transactions. He has ties to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of former President Donald Trump‘s most staunch loyalists.

Other hopefuls include Dan Gallagher, chief legal officer at Robinhood Markets, SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda, and Heath Tarbert, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Future Leadership at the SEC Likely to Change Crypto Regulation Narrative

The other candidates for SEC chair are former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins and Robert Stebbins, a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher. President-elect Trump’s transition team started talking with possible SEC chair prospects just weeks after the election, although a decision isn’t expected for weeks.

Trump will likely spend a great deal of time during his tenure rewriting Gensler-era rules that have proved most onerous to the digital assets sector.

The SEC has been an aggressive enforcer under Gensler’s leadership, doling out multi-billion-dollar fines against some of the largest players in the crypto space. The incoming Trump Administration is likely to take a much lighter hand, and Trump had promised to axe Gensler in his first days back in office.