Senate panel sets confirmation hearing for U.S. Treasury nominee Adeyemo

© Reuters. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden announces members of his economic policy team in Wilmington, Delaware

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's nominee for the No. 2 job at the U.S. Treasury, Wally Adeyemo, will appear before the Senate Finance Committee for a confirmation hearing on Feb. 23, the committee announced on Tuesday.

Committee Chairman Ron Wyden in December said Adeyemo was "eminently qualified" for the job and vowed to get the nomination through the committee as quickly as possible.

The hearing, first reported earlier by Reuters, will start at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT), the committee said.

If confirmed, Adeyemo, a former senior adviser at BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), would be the first Black deputy secretary of the Treasury. He previously served as a deputy national security adviser under Democratic President Barack Obama, and was later president of the Obama Foundation, which is overseeing work on the former president's library.

Adeyemo vowed in December that, if confirmed for the job, he would be “laser-focused” on national security, including “using our sanctions regime to hold bad actors accountable.”

He will lead the Biden administration's review https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sanctions-insight-idUSKBN28Q1CV of Republican former President Donald Trump's blunt-force approach on sanctions, multiple sources told Reuters in December.

Mark Sobel, a former senior Treasury official, said Adeyemo - who served as the White House point person for G7 and G20 meetings during the last year of the Obama administration in 2020 - had a wide range of experience across government.

"Wally knows the Treasury inside out. He knows how it is organized. He knows what all of the pieces do and how they mesh together," Sobel said. "He knows how to get things done in a bureaucracy, which is a valuable skill. So he'll be able to help the Treasury hit the ground running."