Obama Nominates Peirce for Longer Term at SEC

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WASHINGTON – President Obama has nominated Hester Maria Peirce to become a Securities and Exchange Commission member for a five-year term ending on June 5, 2021, in addition to serving the remainder of former Commissioner Daniel Gallagher's term through June 6 of next year.

Obama sent the nomination to the Senate on Monday, having nominated Peirce on Oct. 21 to replace Gallagher, who left the SEC on Oct. 2, about eight months before his term was to expire.

The Senate Banking Committee has not yet scheduled confirmation hearings for Pierce, a senior research fellow and director of the financial markets working group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Lisa Fairfax, a law professor at George Washington University.

Fairfax was nominated by Obama on Oct. 21 to become an SEC commissioner for a term expiring June 5, 2020 and would replace Luis Aguilar, whose term expired in June. He can stay for a certain period of time past his expiration date and recently announced he will leave the SEC in December.

The nominees, which have to be approved by the Senate Banking Committee and confirmed by the full Senate, are not expected to be controversial.

Peirce was formerly senior counsel for the minority staff of the Senate Banking Committee under Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who is now chair of that panel. She held that position from 2008 to 2011. She was staff attorney at the SEC from 2000 to 2008. Between 2004 and 2008 she was counsel to former SEC member Paul Atkins. She received her undergraduate degree from Case Western Reserve University and her law degree from Yale Law School.

Fairfax, championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the banking committee, serves on the executive board and as a director for programs for the George Washington Center for Law, Economics and Finance. She has held several law professor posts since 2004 and was a member of the National Adjudicatory Council for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority from 2008 through 2011. She also 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.

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