Outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen gives a press conference after a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in Washington, USA, on December 13, 2017.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is calling a meeting of key financial regulators this week to discuss market volatility driven by retail trade on GameStop and other stocks.
Yellen will bring together the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a Treasury official said on Tuesday.
Yellen asked ethics lawyers for permission to do so, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Yellen’s decision to seek exemption follows a Reuters report that, because of the lecture fees that she was paid by a key player in the GameStop saga, the Citadel hedge fund, she may need to seek an ethics exemption to make that.
The Treasury official, who declined to be named, said the meeting would be called this week and possibly as early as Wednesday.
“Secretary Yellen believes that market integrity is important and asked for a discussion of recent volatility in financial markets and whether recent activities are consistent with investor protection and fair and efficient markets,” said Treasury spokeswoman Alexandra LaManna in a statement to Reuters.