GE GE Aerospace

By Ryan Tracy, Andrew Ackerman and Nick Timiraos 

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's aides are moving to fill in some important remaining blanks in his financial and economic lineups, eyeing a crisis-era Treasury Department official to become a top banking regulator, and a banker-turned-lawmaker for the No. 2 job at the Treasury.

David Nason, a Treasury official under President George W. Bush who now leads GE Energy Financial Services, has emerged as the front-runner for the top bank oversight job at the Federal Reserve, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile Rep. French Hill, a Republican congressman from Arkansas who once ran a small bank in his home state, is under consideration for Deputy Treasury Secretary, people familiar with the matter said. He would serve under Steven Mnuchin, whose nomination as secretary awaits a Senate confirmation vote.

And Gary Cohn, director of Mr. Trump's White House National Economic Council, is said to be close to naming three top staffers.

None of those appointments has been officially announced, and the Trump team could end up choosing different candidates, these people said. Representatives of the Trump Administration didn't respond to requests for comment. Mr. Nason didn't respond to requests for comment. Mr. Hill's spokesman had no comment.

Reuters earlier reported that Mr. Nason is the leading candidate for the Fed job.

All told, the crop of potential appointees points to a reemergence of several officials from the second term of the George W. Bush administration.

Chief among those is Mr. Nason, who if appointed Fed vice chair for supervision would take on perhaps the most powerful financial regulatory job in the country, with oversight over most of the nation's largest banks and insurance companies. Mr. Trump's team has considered other candidates for that post, including consultant Paul Atkins, who was once a Securities and Exchange Commission member; former BB&T Corp. CEO John Allison; Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig; and Mr. Hill. But people familiar with the matter now say Mr. Nason appears to be leading the pack.

Early in his career, Mr. Nason worked on corporate transactions as a lawyer at Covington & Burling LLP. At General Electric Co. since 2010, he was chief regulatory officer of GE Capital Corp. when it was designated a "systemically important financial institution" in July 2013 and began to be subject to oversight by the Fed. Several months later he moved to lead GE Capital's energy unit, where he has put together deals to finance power plants, sometimes joining with Wall Street investment banks he could end up regulating. GE Capital convinced U.S. officials last year to let it shed the "SIFI" tag -- and the Fed supervision that came with it -- after shrinking significantly.

In between those private sector posts, Mr. Nason worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission as a staffer to Mr. Atkins. It is not clear whether he shares Mr. Atkins' critical view of postcrisis financial regulations, because he hasn't spoken much publicly about financial regulatory policy. Mr. Atkins has run the financial regulation unit for Mr. Trump's transition team, and has played an influential role in helping choose the nominations.

Mr. Nason moved from the SEC to the Treasury, where he rose to his most notable job as assistant secretary for financial markets during the financial crisis. He worked for Secretary Henry Paulson setting up a bank bailout program and an emergency rescue for the money-market fund industry. Those emergency actions prompted a strong political backlash, including from many Republicans now in Congress. But in a 2008 Washington Post article, Mr. Nason was quoted as saying the government's actions were a pragmatic necessity to prevent a collapse of the financial system.

Mr. Hill, who previously served in the Treasury under President George H.W. Bush, is a second-term House lawmaker whose district includes Little Rock, Ark.

Before his political career, Mr. Hill was a community banker. He was chairman and CEO of Delta Trust & Bank, which he and other investors bought in 1999 and grew from $61 million in assets to more than $430 million before selling the firm in 2014 to Simmons First National Corp. for $66 million, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In the House, Mr. Hill has been critical of postcrisis regulation, sponsoring legislation aimed at rolling back portions of a new rule that critics say has crimped the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities.

Another candidate for a top Treasury slot -- the undersecretary for domestic finance -- is Jim Donovan, a senior Goldman Sachs Group Inc. private banker, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.

Mr. Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president, also appears to be rounding out his staff at the White House.

Shahira Knight, an executive at Fidelity Investments, is expected to be appointed to a position on the National Economic Council where she will work on tax policy, according to people familiar with the matter. Other members of that team are likely to include Jeremy Katz, a former executive at Chicago-based Grosvenor Capital Management who worked in the younger Mr. Bush's National Economic Council, and Jeffrey Stoltzfoos, who works with Mr. Nason at GE Energy Financial Services and served in Mr. Paulson's Treasury Department, these people said.

Meantime, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Friday that Republican J. Christopher Giancarlo had been named acting chair, succeeding Obama appointee Timothy Massad, who stepped down as chairman Friday. Mr. Giancarlo is seen as the most likely candidate to be nominated as chairman of the swaps regulator.

Write to Ryan Tracy at ryan.tracy@wsj.com, Andrew Ackerman at andrew.ackerman@wsj.com and Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 20, 2017 18:33 ET (23:33 GMT)

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