WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday nominated Hester Peirce to finish Daniel Gallagher’s term until June 5, 2016, and Lisa Fairfax to replace Luis Aguilar for a term expiring June 5, 2020 at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The nominations were made a day after the president announced his intent to nominate the two, who would leave only one man – Republican Michael Piwowar – as commissioner if they are confirmed by the Senate. Gallagher, a Republican, was sworn in as an SEC Commissioner on Nov. 7, 2011, but left his post early on Oct. 2. Aguilar, a Democrat, became a Commissioner on July 31, 2008 and Obama appointed him to a full five-year term in 2011. That term expired in June of this year, but he can stay in his post until the end of the year.
Peirce is a senior research fellow and director of the financial markets working group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She served as senior counsel for the minority staff of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs from 2008 to 2011 and was a staff attorney with the SEC from 2000 to 2008. Between 2004 and 2008 she was the counsel to Commissioner Paul Atkins. She received her undergraduate degree from Case Western Reserve University and her law degree from Yale Law School.
Frank Shafroth, director of the Center for State and Local Leadership at George Mason University, said he previously worked with Peirce when she was with the Senate Banking Committee and called her nomination “an excellent choice.”
“I think it is good to have someone who has a background of having overseen the agency and that’s been able to see where it’s been effective and where it has been less than effective,” he said.
Fairfax is a professor of law at George Washington University where she serves on the executive board and as director for programs for the George Washington Center for Law, Economics and Finance. She has held various law professor positions since 2004 and was a member of the National Adjudicatory Council of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority from 2008 to 2011. She was a member of FINRA’s NASDAQ market regulation committee from 2008 to 2012 and was an associate with Ropes & Gray between 1995 and 2000. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University.
Fairfax was reported by the Wall Street Journal to be one of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s, D-Mass., top picks to replace Aguilar after Warren spoke out against another potential nominee, Keir Gumbs, a partner with Covington & Burling here who is vice chair of the firm’s capital markets practice group. Warren complained about Gumbs’ ties with Wall Street firms.
