Former SEC Chief Finds Consulting Firm Through Revolving Door

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April 2, 2013

Mary Schapiro, the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), is joining Promontory Financial Group LLC, a major private consulting firm stocked with former regulators, according to an article in The Hill. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Not only did Schapiro recently lead the largest financial regulatory agency, but she is the only person to have also led the other two major Wall Street regulators: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Despite all this, Schapiro doesn’t see this move from a career of government work to a private consultant filled with former regulators as passing through the revolving door. She told The Wall Street Journal, “[i]n my case, there's no revolving door…I won't ever be going back to government."

The revolving door, where individuals move back and forth between government and private industry or where they move only once, is rampant at the SEC, as shown in the Project On Government Oversight’s recent report. That report tracked hundreds of employees filing nearly 2,000 post-employment disclosure statements and found that former SEC regulators frequently helped new employers influence SEC rulemaking, counter investigations and win exemptions from federal law.  

Schapiro has also recently been nominated to the board of General Electric, where she stands to make about $250,000 a year on top of her salary at Promontory and any other board positions she takes. Her salary at the SEC was around $165,000 per year.

Image from Flickr user BizJournalism.

Topics: Financial Sector

Related Content: Conflicts of Interest, Revolving Door, Securities and Exchange Commission

Authors: Andre Francisco

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