The Securities and Exchange Commission now has a full compliment of commissioners. On Thursday afternoon, the seat left vacant by the departure of Commissioner Troy Paredes earlier this month was filled by Michael Piwowar.

President Barack Obama nominated Piwowar to the SEC on May 23. The U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination on Aug. 1, along with that of Kara Stein, who was sworn in on Aug. 9. Piwowar was sworn in by SEC Regional Office Director Michele Wein Layne at a ceremony held in Los Angeles. 

Piwowar previously was the chief Republican economist for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where he worked on the Dodd-Frank Act, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, and other SEC-related issues overseen by the committee.

During the financial crisis, he served a one-year term as a senior economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and was a staff economist for the Financial Regulatory Reform Working Group of the President's Economic Advisory Board. Before that, he was a principal at the Securities Litigation and Consulting Group, where he served as an economic consultant and provided technical assistance on market structure, regulatory policy, and risk management to securities regulators and market participants in the U.S. and abroad.

Piwowar's past experience with the SEC was as a visiting academic scholar and senior financial economist in its Office of Economic Analysis, now the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis. He was previously an assistant professor of finance at Iowa State University.

Having a full slate of commissioners may help speed the pace of some languishing work on its plate. Among the rulemaking efforts likely to be tackled in the weeks ahead are a Dodd-Frank Act requirement that companies calculate and disclose the ratio of CEO compensation to median employee pay. This fall, the SEC is expected to finalize crowdfunding rules required by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. Also on tap is the contentious issue of whether or not it will require publicly traded companies to disclose political contributions.