WASHINGTON – Freddie Mac, the troubled mortgage giant under federal conservatorship since 2008, this afternoon named Donald Layton, an ex-JP Morgan banker and the former chief executive of brokerage firm E*Trade Financial Corp., as it next CEO--its third in the past four years.
Layton, 62, will succeed Charles E. Haldeman Jr., who announced last fall that he would resign as CEO this year. The appointment ends a six-month search for Freddie Mac's third chief executive in the less than four years since the government seized the company and its larger rival, Fannie Mae, at the height of the financial crisis.
Layton, 62, spent 30 years working at JPMorgan Chase and its predecessor companies. He also was a senior adviser to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Wall Street's biggest lobbying group.
