Gensler has more than 25 years of industry experience, having previously served in several regulatory roles including chairman of the CFTC for five years until 2014 and chairman of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission for two years until 2019.

Prior to his various roles in public service across the Obama-Biden Administration, Gensler held several senior roles across the merger and acquisitions, fixed income and currency trading, and treasury divisions at US investment bank Goldman Sachs.

He replaces former SEC chairman, Jay Clayton, who was sworn in by president Donald Trump in 2017. Clayton confirmed in November that he would be stepping down from the role at the end of last year, ending his tenure as one of the longest standing chairmen in the US regulator’s history.

Gensler’s appointment as chair of SEC comes as part of a series of “key administration posts” made by the president-elect Joe Biden’s administration.

“Our administration will hit the ground running to deliver immediate, urgent relief to Americans; confront the overlapping crises of COVID-19, the historic economic downturn, systemic racism and inequality, and the climate crisis; and get this government working for the people it serves,” said Biden.

“These tireless public servants will be a key part of our agenda to build back better — and I am confident they will help make meaningful change and move our country forward.”

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has denied a proposal from Cboe Global Markets to introduce a four-millisecond delay on its equities exchange.

The controversial speed bump was opposed by some of the markets most active participants, including Citadel Securities, BlackRock, T.Rowe Price and industry lobby groups representing mutual funds, hedge funds and high frequency traders.

The SEC stated: “The commission concludes that the proposal is discriminatory and the exchange has not demonstrated that the proposal would not be unfair. The exchange has not demonstrated that the proposal is sufficiently tailored to its stated purpose, which is to improve displayed liquidity.”

Under the Cboe proposal, liquidity-taking orders sent to its EDGA exchange will have to wait four-milliseconds before trading with resting orders in the order book. It said this will provide market makers with sufficient time to re-price their rusting orders before ‘opportunistic’ or high frequency traders can trade with them at old prices.

“Cboe will remain committed to enhancing the US equity markets for all participants, and will continue to work closely with our regulators and industry to develop innovative products that benefit the marketplace,” Cboe said in a statement.

The proposal was set to be the third implemented by a major US exchange after IEX and NYSE American deployed their own speed bumps. However, Cboe said at the time of the plan that these mechanisms do not provide protection to market makers and participants that post two-sided markets, whereas its Liquidity Provider Protection feature would promote price forming displayed liquidity.

NYSE American also scrapped its speed bump in November last year, and instead implement a floor-based designated market maker scheme. 

However, opponents to the Cboe plan argued the speed bump would create unfair advantages for the fastest players, while at the same time, leaving mutual funds to be hit by orders.

The Investment Company Institute, a trade group that represents mutual funds managing more than $25 trillion in assets, wrote in a letter to the SEC that the speed bump would establish a “harmful precedent” by penalising slower market participants.

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The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked members of the Equity Market Structure Committee to refine rules on market-wide circuit breakers.

SEC chair, Mary Jo White, said the challenge with implementing market-wide circuit breakers is that they must be optimised for a variety of markets and volatility events.

Addressing the committee, White suggested the group should look into whether widening trading bands or using futures market data could cause issues for other market conditions.

She asked: “How can market-wide circuit breakers be optimised, given the range of volatility events that can occur in our modern markets?”

As the speed of trading has increased dramatically in recent years, the effects of “sudden liquidity imbalances” and price movements can be severe, she added.

Several changes to circuit-breakers were implemented following the flash crash on 6 May 2010, including market decline thresholds being lowered and the trading halt being shortened.

“We have seen this many times, both market-wide and at the individual stock level, and this type of volatility has occurred in non-equity markets as well,” White said, recalling the events of flash crashes in 2010 and August 24 2015.

White said the committee is to consider further recommendations, as the crash in August last year reflected concerns that “a market-wide halt in trading would have exacerbated that particular volatility event.”

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