WASHINGTON, D.C. — J. Christopher Giancarlo, the acting chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was easily confirmed to the CFTC

in 2014, so it’s expected that Giancarlo will once again win easy Senate confirmation after being picked by President Donald Trump to lead the regulatory agency.

 

The White House nominated Giancarlo, a Republican, on March 15. He was designated acting chairman Jan. 20 following the resignation of Timothy Massad. He first joined

the CFTC on June 16, 2014, after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate. When he was nominated two weeks ago, Giancarlo told attendees at the annual

conference of the Futures Industry Assoc. that he plans to overhaul the agency, cut regulations and restructure the unit that conducts surveillance for market abuses.

Within the past two months, the CFTC has taken action against a handful of individuals and firms for currency manipulation and other fraudulent activities.

 

As part of the restructuring, Giancarlo said he intends to name a “chief market intelligence officer” to help navigate a new agency branch that will be tasked with

keeping pace with new trends and technology. Giancarlo was appointed to the commission by President Barack Obama in 2013 to fill a Republican seat on the five-seat commission. Trump is expected soon to fill three other vacancies, appointing two Republicans and another Democrat. When the CFTC was first established by Congress, lawmakers set aside three of the five seats to be filled by the current elected majority political party.

 

Commissioner Sharon Y. Bowen currently holds one of the two Democratic seats. Her

five-year term expires in 2019. No Senate confirmation hearing date has been set

yet for Giancarlo. The CFTC is the federal agency responsible for regulating commodity

markets – markets used by farmers and ranchers, as well as small business and global firms, overseeing commodity futures, options and swaps.

 

Commodities traded include traditional agricultural crops like wheat, corn, soybeans and sugar as well as non-farm commodities like oil, gas, silver, gold and financial instruments. As the top U.S. regulator of derivatives, Giancarlo also is expected to follow through on the White House’s call to adopt a more industryfriendly

approach to market oversight.

 

Derivatives are traded in a $500 trillion global market and were blamed for helping to ignite and escalate the financial meltdown that touched off the Great Recession. ''

 

Giancarlo has also said in previous speeches he intends to overhaul the agency’s

trading rulebook for swaps that have been blamed for widening the 2008 financial

meltdown. Since his first appointment in 2013, he has tried to change the rules,

giving banks and other financial institutions greater leeway in how they execute trades.

 

“These priorities are part of an agenda I like to call ‘making market reform work

for America,’ ” he said in a January speech following Trump’s calls to overall the rules

governing the financial markets.

 

Giancarlo said he also intends to take a more active role as a member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a watchdog body created by the Dodd-

Frank law that oversees larges financial firms to prevent their collapse. Once identified as a risk, a company could face an extra level of regulations and monitoring.

 

Before entering government service, the 57-year-old Giancarlo was executive vice president of GFI Group Inc., a financial services firm; a partner at a New York law

firm; and, earlier in London, at an international law firm.