Biden and Harris Get Warm Welcome From Wall Street

Wall Street has made its peace with a Joe Biden victory, taking comfort in his decades-long political career in which moderation is a prevailing trait. But it’s nervous about his more liberal allies.

Finance executives will be closely watching how Biden handles the coming internal Democratic fight between centrists and progressives that threatens to increase regulation and dent profits.

Firms are counting on his business-friendly inner circle -- a group that includes long-time Democratic stategists, corporate lawyers and former lobbyists -- to exert the most influence in selecting nominees for agencies like the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission that manage the economy and police the markets. Middle-of-the-road candidates have a key advantage: They’ll have a much easier path to confirmation in a Senate that appears likely to remain in Republican hands.

Yet liberal Democrats, inspired by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s focus on wealth inequality and distrust of big banks, are intent on getting like-minded officials into those jobs. They argue that in a Democratic administration, the president must pick regulators with strong records of prioritizing average Americans over financial titans.

“Personnel is policy,” and progressives have come into the fight “armed with a bazooka,” said Stephen Myrow, managing partner of Beacon Policy Advisors, a Washington-based firm that tracks regulatory and legislative proposals. “You will certainly see some re-regulation.”

Hanging in the balance could be the reach of post-crisis rules that were eased during the Trump administration. Over the past four years, adjustments to complex requirements like capital levels, collateral for derivatives trades and brokers’ legal responsibilities have saved banks tens of billions of dollars. Firms are also concerned there will be a fresh focus on investigations, a clampdown on executive pay and that regulators will be slow to lift restrictions on dividends and share buybacks that were implemented due to the pandemic.

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