Billionaire conservative cause bankroller and Koch Industries Chairman and CEO Charles Koch may be indirectly getting a seat at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Hester Peirce, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of its Financial Markets Working Group, is widely reported to be in line to succeed outgoing Commissioner Daniel Gallagher.

The center promotes itself as bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. Koch, who gave the money that started Mercatus nearly four decades ago, is a member of its board. Including Koch, four of the 10 Mercatus board members have strong connections to his company.

Mercatus founder and Koch Industries Executive Vice President Richard Fink sits on the boards of both the academic center and the company. Fink is past member of the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council and President Reagan’s Commission on Privatization.

Charles Koch Foundation President Brian Hooks also sits on the Mercatus board as does Manuel Johnson, a former professor of economics at the university, where he held the Koch Chair in International Economics.

Johnson has also served as a Fed vice chair. During the Reagan administration, he was an assistant secretary at the treasury department.

Former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese also serves on the board along with another Reagan Administration Justice Department alum Frank Atkinson.

Before coming to Mercatus, Peirce was the lead attorney at the SEC for then-Republican Commissioner Paul Atkins and worked as the lead counsel for Sen. Richard Shelby on the Senate Banking Committee before he became chairman.

Peirce is the co-author of a book attacking the Dodd-Frank Act along with co-Mercatus Center working group member J.W. Verret.

From May 2013 until this April, Verret was chief economist for the House Financial Services Committee. He was succeed in that job by Mercatus senior research fellow Dino Falaschetti.

Another past Mercatus senior fellow, Keith Hall, heads up the Congressional Budget Office.

Peirce currently sits on the SEC Investor Advisory Committee.

As evidence of her conservative thinking on regulation, in testimony before a Financial Services Committee panel, Peirce criticized the authors of the Dodd-Frank Act for putting too much power in the hands of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

 

“Any pronouncement from the agency’s director has the appearance of being the agency’s official position. By contrast, an offhand comment by the chairman of a commission-led agency looks less like a regulatory pronouncement, since official agency positions are established through commission votes,” she said.

When asked by Financial Advisor magazine if a fiduciary duty should be imposed on broker-dealers, Piece said she has given some thought to the issue. She said she wants to read the SIFMA white paper on the matter.