(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Trump is considering nominating ex-U.S. attorney Debra Wong Yang to run the SEC, positioning her to be the second consecutive former federal prosecutor to lead Wall Street’s top regulator, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
While Trump and his transition team have spoken with a handful of candidates, Yang is the top contender to be SEC chairwoman, said the person, who asked not to be named because the incoming president hasn’t announced his pick. Yang, who is now a partner at law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, would replace Mary Jo White, who has said she will step down at the end of the Obama administration.
Trump hasn’t made a decision about who should lead the SEC, said Jason Miller, a spokesman for the president-elect. Yang didn’t immediately return an e-mail or phone call seeking comment.
Yang joined Gibson Dunn in 2006 after serving as a U.S. attorney in Los Angeles during George W. Bush’s presidency. With a background as a government lawyer and in private practice, she has had stints going after companies and defending them.
CORPORATE WRONGDOING
In favoring an ex-prosecutor, Trump is emphasizing the SEC’s role in investigating corporate wrongdoing rather than its more mundane — though often as important — policy-making side. Yang’s lack of experience in securities regulation could present challenges for her in trying to quickly roll back rules stemming from Dodd-Frank, a priority of many Republican lawmakers and Wall Street firms.
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After more than three-and-a-half years at the helm, Mary Jo White made incremental moves to expand advisor exams, but did not move on structural reform or implement a uniform fiduciary standard, as many advocates had hoped.
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While it’s early in the process, a number of names are being floated as possible contenders.
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Another potential hurdle for Yang could be trying to navigate the SEC’s byzantine bureaucracy as an outsider. Though the agency’s chair sets the agenda, rules are usually spearheaded by longtime staff members whose cooperation is vital to getting things done. The SEC regulates everything from stock trading to asset managers to disclosures by public companies.
White, President Obama’s final SEC chief, also defended companies as a private lawyer after serving as a U.S. attorney in New York during Bill Clinton’s presidency. At the SEC, which she joined in 2013, she was tripped up by policy, and her tenure was at times marked by discord and paralysis over passing regulations. White’s office was even nicknamed the cheese cellar by SEC staff members, who would quip that it was where policies went to age.
ENRON TEAM
Wang leads Gibson Dunn’s crisis management practice group and was part of a team of lawyers that issued a 2014 report absolving New Jersey Governor Chris Christie of blame for the George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal. Gibson Dunn was hired by Christie’s office.
Appointed by Bush in 2002, Yang was the first Asian-American woman to be named a U.S. attorney. At the Justice Department, she served on the Bush administration’s corporate fraud task force, which was set up in the wake of Enron’s accounting scandal. Yang was a California state judge before becoming a federal prosecutor.
