Career Cop

The Securities and Exchange Commission, top cop of the U.S. stock markets, was led into its most active role in many years by its current chairman, William L. Gary. Ever since Gary made known his desire to return to his Columbia law professorship by this fall,

Washington and Wall Street have wondered whether Lyndon Johnson would brake the SEC by picking a less aggressive chairman. Last week, making clear that the SEC will continue on its energetic course, the President selected a chairman who is at least as vigorous as Gary: SEC Careerist Manuel Frederick Cohen, 51. "There is no chance of any soft stuff taking place," said Manny Cohen. "The program we have started will be continued."

The program, shaped in no small part by Cohen, calls for closer SEC regulation of the securities markets, perhaps leading to lower brokerage commissions among other changes. It stems largely from the SEC's massive 1963 stock market study (which, coincidentally, was led by Chicago Lawyer Milton Cohen, no kin to the new chairman). Gary made a strong pitch to Lyndon Johnson to pick Cohen, who was already a member of the five-man commission, as the new chairman, and Cohen was not hurt by his close friendship with White House Special Counsel Myer Feldman. Johnson was also under pressure to pick a careerist to soften criticism of his recent appointment of conservative Republican Hamer Budge, a former Congressman from Idaho with little experience in the securities markets, as an SEC commissioner. To fill the vacancy created by Cohen's promotion, Johnson last week chose a Los Angeles lawyer, Francis M. Wheat, 43, a Democrat.

Brooklyn-born Cohen is a Russian immigrant's son who worked his way to a degree at Brooklyn Law School ('36) and joined the commission in 1942. Rising to head its division of corporate finance, he became known as a savvy administrator whose devotion to the job did not stop him from being well liked by the people he was regulating. Last week New York Stock Exchange President Keith Funston called Cohen "dedicated and realistic."

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