Senate approves Mary Jo White as SEC chairman

White will officially become head of the Securities and Exchange Commission when she is sworn in

The US Senate voted yesterday to confirm Mary Jo White as the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The former federal prosecutor and partner of a white-shoe law firm will take over an agency widely seen as much improved from the start of President Barack Obama's first term as president in 2009, when it was reeling from the disclosure of the decades-long fraud by Bernard Madoff and a wave of collapses by securities firms in the 2008 financial crisis.

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