Report: Altman Top Pick to Replace Summers
Bloomberg reports:
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore Partners Inc. and a former deputy treasury secretary, is a leading candidate to replace Lawrence Summers as director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Altman met with Obama yesterday afternoon to talk to him about the job as head of the White House group that coordinates policy-making and economic advice for the president.
Altman, 64, who served at the Treasury Department under former President Bill Clinton, has close ties to the business community. The people familiar with the matter said he might be able to repair the rift that has emerged between Obama and investors. Altman didn’t return a request for comment.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed Altman is under consideration. The selection process is in the “early” stages and “there are a number of good candidates, including him,” Gibbs said today. It’s “way too premature” to say any of those under consideration is at the top of the president’s list, he said.
The search for a director of the council has been under way at least since September, when Summers announced he would return at the end of the year to Harvard University, where he was once president.
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