The Biden administration saw a key figure on its financial regulatory team step into place as the Senate confirmed that Michael Barr would become the government’s most influential banking regulator.
Barr’s confirmation on Wednesday as the Federal Reserve’s vice chairman for oversight provides the central bank with a full seven-member board for the first time in nearly a decade and adds to a group of Biden-appointed banking supervisors who might review financial regulations that were relaxed during the Trump administration.
Barr won bipartisan support for the regulatory role, which has a four-year term. The vote was 66 to 28, exceeding the 50 votes needed for confirmation. Earlier Wednesday, senators confirmed Barr for a 10-year term on the Fed’s board.
Dean of public policy at the University of Michigan, Barr is the latest of five candidates nominated by Mr. Biden for the central bank. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and three other appointments have been confirmed in recent months.
The oversight role that Barr is tasked with is responsible for developing a broad view of the regulation of large banks and other financial firms. This includes developing policy recommendations for the Fed’s Board of Directors and overseeing its regulatory staff, which oversees some of America’s largest financial firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM,
-0,94%,
Bank of America Corp BAC,
-1,66%.
and Citigroup Inc C,
-1,37%.
Randal Quarles, who previously served as Fed supervisor, focused on simplifying financial regulations enacted following the 2008-09 financial crisis, moves that proponents say clarified or better calibrated the rules of the central bank, but which some Democrats say have significantly lessened the impact of the Wall Street Rule Book. Quarles left the Fed in December.
Barr is expected to weigh in on a push from the Biden administration to overhaul how regulators assess big bank mergers, a process in its early stages that might make bank reconciliations more difficult.
Barr worked in the US Treasury Department during the Clinton and Obama administrations, including as a senior lieutenant to then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Barr played a role as the architect of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul.
Barr’s confirmation is a victory for the Biden administration following several regulation nominees failed to gain ground in the equally divided Senate.
An expanded version of this story appears on WSJ.com.
