WASHINGTON — The new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission pulls up to work each day in a red Porsche with a vanity license plate, "1RCB1," and a bumper sticker that says, "Nuke the Duke."
A beeper on his belt and a fax machine in his Virginia home keep him in touch with his staff. Six clocks, newly mounted on his office wall, remind him of the trading hours of stock exchanges in London, Chicago, New York, Sydney, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Richard C. Breeden, at 39, one of the youngest SEC chiefs ever, is on the move.
In his first two months in office, crisis management has dominated Breeden's agenda. He has confronted the stock market "mini-crash" in October, the San Francisco earthquake that forced West Coast trading to be transferred elsewhere and sensitive dealings with Congress and the Bush Administration over market reform legislation and the savings and loan debacle.
But Breeden has found time to begin placing his personal stamp on a regulatory agency whose concerns vary from protecting small investors against unscrupulous stockbrokers to regulating multibillion-dollar corporate takeover fights.
A former attorney with major law firms in New York and Washington, Breeden served in the Bush presidential campaign. His bumper sticker is a leftover insignia of that battle.
While he has a strong bias toward allowing market mechanisms to work with the least possible government interference, Breeden, in the mold of other top Bush Administration officials, is a regulatory pragmatist who has no aversion to supporting new regulations or tough enforcement of the law.
His experience as the Administration's quarterback of the savings and loan bailout legislation earlier this year reinforced his belief that free markets can function effectively only with adequate government supervision and zealous enforcement.
Breeden sketched out his plans for the SEC last week during an interview in his office on Fifth Street Northwest, where new dimensions seem to reflect his ambition. Upon taking over from David S. Ruder, Breeden ordered the wall torn down that separates the SEC chairman's office from an aide's office next door, creating a much larger domain for himself in which he installed several additional telephones end created three separate work areas.
