Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to meld the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is already experiencing a major backlash from key lawmakers and regulators, but a new commissioner expected to join one of these agencies has the kind of experience that could help the process move forward.
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Elisse Walter, who awaits Senate Banking Committee confirmation to become a Democratic commissioner at the SEC, spent several years at both agencies. She joined the SEC in 1977 and rose to become deputy director of the SEC's Division of Corporate Finance before leaving in 1994 to work at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a general counsel.
It's unclear whether the two agencies will actually take steps to combine because there are many regulatory and legislative challenges to overcome. But Walter's experience at both agencies could help trounce a communications breakdown between the CFTC's "principles-based process for market oversight" and the SEC's more stringent rules and regulations.
Don't expect movement soon. Paulson has pegged the CFTC-SEC merger as a midterm goal as part of his blueprint, meaning it's not an immediate priority, but it also is not something he wants to see take place in the distant future. Of course, a lot depends on who succeeds Paulson in the next administration and how congressional committees on Capitol Hill will work out their own differences. - Ron Orol
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Ron Orol is a Washington-based reporter for The Deal and author of Extreme Value Hedging: How Activist Hedge Fund Managers Are Taking on the World.
