Trump nominates Paul Atkins to head Securities and Exchange Commission
President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he has nominated Paul Atkins, a former commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to be the agency’s chairman.
Atkins, the CEO and founder of Patomak Global Partners, a risk management consultancy, served as an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008 under President George W. Bush, according to Xinhua news agency.
The SEC has five commissioners, one of whom is designated as chairman by the president. The president nominates all five commissioners, and their appointments must be approved by the Senate.
Founded in 1934 during the Great Depression, the SEC’s mission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.
“Paul is a proven leader for common-sense regulations. He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of investors, and that provide capital to make our economy the best in the world,” Trump said on Wednesday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“He also recognizes that digital assets and other innovations are crucial to making America greater than ever before,” Trump added.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump nominated Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4 and leader of two private spaceflights, as the next administrator of NASA, and Daniel P. Driscoll, a U.S. Army veteran and venture capitalist, as the secretary of the Army. Both positions would require Senate approval.
Trump also appointed his former aide Peter Navarro as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing in his next administration and nominated David A. Warrington as Assistant to the President and Counsel to the President.
