FERC Commissioner and erstwhile Chair Willie Phillips resigned from the Commission with immediate effect – the current Chair’s farewell statement addressed to Mr Phillips may be found here (you may need a US VPN to access this FERC webpage).
What is it about?
- FERC Commissioners are political appointees. The Democrat-appointed Willie Phillips served as Chair from January 2023 after being appointed as a Commissioner in December 2021. He resigned as Chair on 20 January 2025 following the new administration’s appointment of Mark Christie to the position. Phillips’ natural term however was only set to end in June 2026 leading to an anomalous situation where the composition of the Commission remained weighted in favour of the Democrats (with three democrat aligned Commissioners versus two Republican aligned Commissioners including the current Chair) despite the Republican-held White House;
- As such, it is perhaps not surprising to read reports from political journals such as Politico (click here) that Phillips was asked to step down by the current administration. The vacancy will now allow the current administration to fill the vacancy which will place the Republicans back in control of FERC’s agenda. Commentators note that control over FERC will be critical to the success of the new administration’s far-reaching energy policy ambitions;
- The working relationship between the remaining FERC Commissioners seems more collegiate and bipartisan than is perhaps the case at the CFTC and SEC. The remaining Commissioners’ statements (see here, here and here) are notable for their magnanimity. Looking forward however it is likely that a 3-2 Republican split might expose fault lines as the various Trump administration policy prescriptions are pushed to the fore.
Remaining on the topic of personnel changes at US Federal regulatory agencies, this week the SEC, the US financial market regulator, announced (click here) that its new Chair had been officially sworn in.
Paul Atkins, a Republican appointee, was previously an SEC Commissioner under the Bush administration between 2002 and 2008. During his first stint, he advocated for transparency, consistency, and the principled use of cost-benefit analysis at the agency. In his most recent role, he was the CEO of Patomak Global Partners, a risk management and compliance consultancy that he founded in 2009. Atkins’ full bio may be found here. According to some reports, including this one from Anderson PC, a law firm, believes Atkins will scale back “aggressive” SEC enforcement practices, dampen shareholder activism involving ESG and roll back ESG mandates amongst other things.
