Yellen sees White House moving quickly to name FDIC nominee

By David Lawder

STRESA, Italy (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday that she believes the White House will move as quickly as possible to nominate a new Federal Deposit Insurance Corp chair to replace Martin Gruenberg, who tendered his resignation amid a sexual harassment scandal.

Gruenberg, a Democrat, is staying on until a new chair is confirmed by Congress to avoid a partisan deadlock on the FDIC board that would hold back the Biden administration's regulatory objective.

Yellen told reporters at the end of a G7 finance leaders meeting in northern Italy that the nomination decision was up to the White House, "but I believe they're going to want to move this as quickly as they can."

Reuters reported separately on Friday that a nomination decision could be made as early as next week.

Yellen told Reuters in an interview on Friday that FDIC's next chair needs to be "committed to cleaning up the problem" after an independent probe found widespread sexual harassment problems that prompted current chair Martin Gruenberg to resign this week. She said the agency needed someone "who can come in from the outside, is credible in terms of their own past actions" on similar issues.

On Saturday she walked back those comments slightly, telling reporters that while the "most likely" nominee would come from outside FDIC, she would not rule a qualified candidate from within the agency.

(Reporting by David Lawder; editing by Diane Craft)