A veteran financial market regulator was chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to head the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
An announcement nominating Mary Schapiro as SEC chairman is expected on Thursday, the newspaper's website said.
A Senate aide told Reuters that Schapiro was one of two front-runners for the top job at the SEC, but he could not confirm that she was the final choice by Obama. The other frontrunner was Harvey Goldschmid, a former SEC commissioner and now a law professor at Columbia University, the aide said.
Schapiro served as an SEC commissioner for six years, then became chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 1994 during the Clinton administration.
At the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Schapiro leads the largest non-governmental regulator for all securities firms doing business with the U.S. public, Reuters reported.