US President George W. Bush has nominated senior Wall Street investment banker Mr William Donaldson to be the new chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The appointment comes amid persistent investor mistrust stemming from a year of corporate scandals.
Mr Bush chose Mr Donaldson (71) to replace Mr Harvey Pitt, who quit as SEC chairman on November 5th after a series of gaffes, leaving the SEC leaderless and facing a crushing workload of investigations and market reforms mandated by Congress.
"Bill Donaldson will be a strong leader with a clear mission to vigorously enforce our nation's laws against corporate corruption and to uphold the highest standards of integrity in the securities markets," Mr Bush said in an appearance at the White House, with Mr Donaldson at his side.
In choosing Mr Donaldson, the president turned to a fellow Yale graduate and establishment financier with a sterling reputation, who also faces a lawsuit related to his stint as chairman of health care insurance giant Aetna Inc.
Mr Donaldson's nomination ends weeks of speculation over replacing Pitt, whose rocky 15-month tenure spanned the September 11 attacks that shut the markets and a wave of scandals that began with the collapse a year ago of Enron Corp.
Mr Pitt, a former corporate lawyer and SEC staff lawyer, resigned amid controversy over his handling of appointments to a new national accounting oversight board. His tenure was also dogged by charges that he remained sympathetic to the accounting industry he had represented as a private attorney.
In recent days, Mr Bush has substantially reshaped his economic team. On Monday, he named railroad executive Mr John Snow as Treasury secretary. Investment banker Mr Stephen Friedman was seen as front-runner to become White House economic adviser soon, replacing Mr Lawrence Lindsey.
Mr Donaldson was a founder of Yale University's Graduate School of Management and served as its first dean. He served during 1975 as counsel to US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Before that, he was US undersecretary of state under Secretary Henry Kissinger from 1973 until 1975.