WASHINGTON—The Senate has approved President Joe Biden’s choice of Gary Gensler to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, signaling an emphasis on investor protection for the Wall Street watchdog agency after a deregulatory stretch during the Trump administration.
The vote Wednesday was 53-45, mostly along party lines in the narrowly Democratic-controlled Senate, to confirm Gensler, an expert with experience as a strong markets regulator during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Gensler had a two-decades-long career as a Wall Street banker and later, as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, he tightened oversight of the $400 trillion worldwide market for complex financial transactions that helped cause the Great Recession.
