Senate Banking committee approves two SEC nominees

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Thursday approved nominees for the two vacant spots on the five-member Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the highest ranking Democrat on the committee.

The nominations of Democrat Lisa Fairfax and Republican Hester Peirce now go to the full Senate.

The Republican-led Congress has been slow to fill empty seats at agencies and boards, and many of the nominations made by outgoing President Barack Obama, a Democrat, have stalled. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, the most senior Democrat on the Banking Committee, said the committee has yet to hold hearings for nominees to the Federal Reserve Board or the board of the Export-Import Bank.

"It is disgraceful that the Senate still hasn’t confirmed any of the 20 nominations that the Banking Committee has received since the start of last year," said Brown in a statement. “These nominees are essential to promoting financial stability, protecting national security, and ensuring that American businesses of all sizes can compete on a level playing field with foreign competitors."

The two SEC nominees were part of a block of five nominations that were approved by a single voice vote in a room near the Senate floor.

The committee also approved Jay Lerner as inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Amias Gerety as assistant secretary for financial institutions at the Treasury Department and Rhett Jeppson as director of the U.S. Mint.

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, dissented in the hastily scheduled vote in protest over the Export-Import Bank board nominees.

"Despite the fact that Congress finally passed my bill to reauthorize the agency last December, the Ex-Im Bank has still been hamstrung from supporting American jobs and businesses because there isn’t a majority on the board," she said in a statement. "I don’t have strong concerns with the nominees we voted on today.”

The committee attempted to approve the nominees last month, but opposition from Democrats over corporate political disclosure threw the vote into disarray. The Democrats had pressed the SEC nominees to support a requirement that corporations disclose political donations.

Obama put the two names forward in October.

Peirce once worked on the Senate Banking Committee staff and then became a senior research fellow and director of the financial markets working group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Fairfax is a law professor at George Washington University, and has written a primer on shareholder activism.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Bernard Orr and Steve Orlofsky)

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