A top lawyer on Wall Street known for his work on leveraged buyouts is being floated as a possible candidate to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission for the Trump administration, The Post has learned.
Richard Farley — a partner at New York white-shoe law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel who is chairman of its leveraged finance group — has joined the Trump transition team’s list of possible replacements for current SEC Chair Gary Gensler, sources said.
Farley has represented some of the world’s biggest banks on major financing deals in recent years, including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and UBS and financial services companies including Cantor Fitzgerald.
In 2017, Farley represented Cantor when it was selling shares in Sorrento Therapeutics, according to Kramer’s website.
Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick is helping to lead Trump’s transition team and is in charge of choosing personnel.
Farley is also an old friend of Trump backer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who is now angling for a cabinet position — and reportedly got a text from RFK Jr. with five thumbs-up emojis to signal Trump had clinched the White House, Bloomberg reported this week.
“It’s over,” Farley said early Wednesday, according to the outlet, which added that he “sounded buoyant.”
Farley is still a registered Democrat.
But since he married the GOP’s NYC Finance Chairwoman Chivacci “Chele” Farley in 2016, his social media posts have been clearly supportive of Republicans including Trump, sources said.
His wife ran unsuccessfully for US Senate in 2018 against Kirsten Gillibrand, and then in 2020 for US Congress.
Farley is an SEC historian, having written the 2015 Simon & Schuster book Wall Street Wars: The Epic Battles with Washington That Created the Modern Financial System.
In December 2012, he penned a New York Times opinion column arguing that it was time for a “bold choice” for a new SEC chief after President Barack Obama’s White House victory, calling for “a successful market professional from Wall Street, preferably someone who, like Joseph Kennedy, is not concerned with offending interested constituencies.”
Farley worked as a partner at Cahill Gordon from 2000 to 2011.
He did a nearly five-year stint as a partner at Paul Hastings before joining Kramer Levin. Farley lately has represented private credit firms and spoke recently on Bloomberg Television about how the shadow banking system works.
Farley declined to comment when reached by The Post on Friday about his possible SEC candidacy.
Other names that have been reported to be in the running to lead the SEC include Dan Gallagher – Robinhood’s chief legal officer and a former SEC commissioner, according to Politico.
There is also former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Chris Giancarlo, also known as “CryptoDad”; former SEC General Counsel Robert Stebbins, now a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and current SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who occupies a Republican seat on the commission, Politico also reported.
People in Trump’s cabinet have been discussing how to return agencies like the SEC back to their original, Congressionally-mandated intent as consumer protection arms of the government, The Post reported.
High on the list of priorities is firing Gensler, and removing any trace of him from the office after he has made rumblings that he wants to finish his term, which ends in June 2026, The Post reported.
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