U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler will resign from his role at the agency on Jan. 20, 2025 – the same day as Donald Trump’s inauguration for his second term in the White House.
“The Securities and Exchange Commission is a remarkable agency,” Gensler said in a statement. “The staff and the Commission are deeply mission-driven, focused on protecting investors, facilitating capital formation, and ensuring that the markets work for investors and issuers alike. The staff comprises true public servants. It has been an honor of a lifetime to serve with them on behalf of everyday Americans and ensure that our capital markets remain the best in the world.”
“I thank President Biden for entrusting me with this incredible responsibility. The SEC has met our mission and enforced the law without fear or favor,” he continued. “I’ve greatly enjoyed working with my fellow Commissioners, Allison Herren Lee, Elad Roisman, Hester Peirce, Caroline Crenshaw, Mark Uyeda, and Jaime Lizárraga. I also thank Congress, my colleagues across the U.S. government, and fellow regulators around the world.”
The former Goldman Sachs investment banker has served as the agency’s head since April 2021, joining in the immediate aftermath of the GameStop market events. The GameStop saga would go on to inspire the film “Dumb Money,” which starred Seth Rogen, Pete Davidson, Sebastian Stan and Paul Dano.
During his tenure, the agency, whose primary purpose is to enforce laws against market manipulation, adopted new reforms to lower risk and enhance efficiency throughout the entirety of the U.S. capital markets.
Those new rules include enhancements to the $28 trillion U.S. Treasury markets, including promoting central clearing and narrowing circumstances in which broker-dealers are exempt from national securities association registration. The rules also cover the $55 trillion U.S. equity market, including updates to the National Market System so that stocks can be traded more efficiently with narrower spreads and lower fees. Improvements also include shortening the settlement cycle to one day and updating information regarding brokers’ execution quality.
The SEC also adopted amended rules that required large hedge fund and private equity fund advisors to make current reports on certain events. It improved the quality of information that it and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission receive from Form PF filers, which will be implemented next year. It also adopted reforms to money market funds to make them more resilient, liquid, and transparent, including in times of stress.
Additionally, the agency adopted corporate governance changes to promote better trust in the capital markets, including: updating the rules for when corporate insiders can sell their shares; for when executives have to give back compensation based on erroneously reported financials; for disclosure of executive pay versus performance; to allow shareholders to vote their preferred mix of board candidates on universal proxy cards in contested director elections; and for more timely disclosures by those who are seeking control and buy more than a 5% stake in a company.
The SEC also enhanced disclosure around public company issuers’ cyber and climate risks, as well as for those companies seeking to go public via a special purpose acquisition company; it required certain broker-dealers and investment advisers to notify customers of data breaches that might put personal information at risk; and regularly published aggregate, anonymized data regarding registered investment funds, private funds, and investment advisers.
The Divisions of Enforcement and Examinations, which make up about half of the agency, received more than 145,000 tips, complaints, and referrals, and awarded approximately $1.5 billion to whistleblowers, filed more than 2,700 enforcement actions and obtained approximately $21 billion in penalties and disgorgement orders. Between fiscal years 2021 and 2024, the agency returned more than $2.7 billion to harmed investors as a result of enforcement actions.
The SEC also recovered more than $250 million for harmed investors through examination of investment advisors, investment companies, and broker dealers, among others, and enhanced communication by sharing timely information about its annual priorities and observations and proactively engaging with industry and other regulators.
Additionally, the agency brought actions against cryptocurrency-related fraud, wash trading, registration violations and other misconduct. In the last full fiscal year, 18% of the SEC’s tips, complaints, and referrals were crypto-related, despite the crypto markets comprising less than 1% of the U.S. capital markets.
Prior to leading the SEC, Gensler was chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, leading the Obama Administration’s reform of the $400 trillion swaps market. He served as senior advisor to U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes in writing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) and was undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance and assistant secretary of the Treasury from 1997-2001.
Before joining the SEC, Gensler was a professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-director of MIT’s Fintech@CSAIL, and senior advisor to the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative. From 2017 to 2019, he served as chair of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission.
At Goldman, Gensler was a partner in the mergers & acquisition department, headed the firm’s media group, led fixed income & currency trading in Asia, and was co-head of finance, responsible for the firm’s worldwide Controllers and Treasury efforts.
