President elect Barack Obama has nominated Gary Gensler, former assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial markets, to serve as Chairman of the Commodity Futures Tradgin Commission.
“President-elect Obama has made an outstanding choice in Gary Gensler to lead the CFTC,” said Walt Lukken, acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “Gary has the rare combination of intelligence, market and government experience and independence that will help lead this agency in its vigorous oversight of the futures markets going forward. I look forward to our continued work with Gary and the incoming Administration to facilitate a seamless transition at this agency.”
According to a Treasury Department profile, Gensler previously was a partner of The Goldman Sachs Group, L.P. He joined the company in 1979 in the Mergers & Acquisition Department. In 1984, he assumed responsibility for the firm’s efforts advising media companies and was elected a partner in 1988. Gensler subsequently joined the firm’s Fixed Income Division and directed Goldman’s Fixed Income and Currency trading efforts in Tokyo. Since 1995, Mr. Gensler has been Co-head of Finance for Goldman Sachs worldwide.
As Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, Mr. Gensler serves as a senior advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury in developing and implementing the Federal Government’s policies and plans for debt management and the sale of U.S. government securities. He advises on broad matters of Federal, State and local finance, including leading the Treasury’s participation in the financing of the District of Columbia. Mr. Gensler also serves as a senior member of the Treasury Financing Group and the Working Group on Financial Markets.
Gensler graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics, where he also received a Master of Business Administration from the Graduate Division in 1979. He and his wife, Francesca Danieli, have three daughters and reside in New York City. Gensler was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
