By Chris Prentice
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The White House will soon appoint market regulator Christy Goldsmith Romero as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as it targets the week of July 8 for its first hearing, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday .
Goldsmith Romero, a Democratic commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will replace Martin Gruenberg, who resigned after a damning investigation revealed widespread sexual harassment and other misconduct at the top banking regulator.
The White House is rushing to fill the role so it can push across the US President Joe Biden‘s regulatory agenda, including large increases in bank capital, just six months before the US presidential election.
Although administration officials have said they want to take action quickly, White House and Democratic Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, who is responsible for advancing the FDIC nominees, has not said when they expect to hold hearings.
Kristin Johnson, the CFTC’s other Democratic commissioner who was also in the running for FDIC chair, will simultaneously be nominated for assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department, the same source said.
The White House declined comment. Spokespeople for Brown, Treasury and the FDIC did not immediately respond to a request for comment after business hours. A spokesperson for the CFTC declined to comment.
Johnson’s hearing will take place alongside Goldsmith Romero’s, the source said. She was already in line for the Treasury role before Gruenberg succumbed to political pressure to resign last month.
A Democrat, Gruenberg, will also remain in office until the Senate confirms the new chairman, allowing Democrats to retain control of the agency until at least January of next year.
Now that the elections are just around the corner, time is tight. The Senate is only in session in mid-July and in August through Labor Day on September 2. That leaves two months before the November general election, when senators up for re-election may prefer to campaign at home rather than be stuck in Washington.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that a formal announcement could come this week. Punchbowl News reported earlier on Wednesday that the White House would announce Romero’s nomination on Thursday.
(Writing by Michelle Price; additional reporting by Douglas Gillison and Pete Schroeder and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Megan Davies)
