WASHINGTON – The Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a hearing on March 15 to consider Lisa Fairfax and Hester Peirce, President Obama's two nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The hearing, which will also include consideration of a nominee for director of the U.S. Mint, will be the first time the committee has considered nominees in more than a year. Committee chair Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., faced mounting criticism and pressure, especially from committee Democrats, in recent weeks over the lack of progress on Obama nominees, but maintained he would not schedule hearings until after his primary election on March 1. In all, 16 Obama nominees are waiting for a hearing with the committee.
Obama nominated Fairfax and Peirce to become SEC commissioners on Oct. 21. The committee must hold confirmation hearings and then recommend them for approval by the full Senate.
Peirce, a senior research fellow and director of the financial markets working group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, was nominated to replace former Republican SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher, who left on Oct. 2. Fairfax, a professor of law at George Washington University, was nominated to replace former Democratic Commissioner Luis Aguilar, whose term expired last June.
Before her role with the Mercatus Center, Peirce served as senior counsel to the minority staff of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs from 2008 to 2011 and was a staff attorney at the SEC from 2000 to 2008. Between 2004 and 2008 she was counsel to SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins. She received her undergraduate degree from Case Western Reserve University and her law degree from Yale Law School.
Fairfax serves on the executive board at George Washington's law school and is director of 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 an associate with Ropes & Gray between 1995 and 2000. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University.
