The newly appointed head of one of the nation’s top housing regulators tightened his grip on the agency with a major board shake-up on Monday at two government-controlled mortgage finance firms.
William Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, ousted 14 board members at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and named himself chairman of both companies’ boards.
The last two F.H.F.A directors did not sit on the boards of Fannie and Freddie, the two firms that help drive the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market. The F.H.F.A. is the primary regulator for Fannie and Freddie, which have been under federal government control since the 2008 financial crisis.
Some see the board shake-ups as a move by Mr. Pulte to quiet potential dissent to any future job cuts at Fannie and Freddie, which in total employ about 15,000 people, or changes in housing policy.
“You want to get rid of people on the board who might make noise,” said Christopher Whalen, chairman of Whalen Global Advisors, which specializes in analyzing and consulting on financial institutions. “The people who are left, they trust.”
One of the new directors Mr. Pulte named to the Fannie board is Christopher Stanley, an executive at Elon Musk’s SpaceX who is working with Mr. Musk and his group, the Department of Government Efficiency, in efforts to downsize the federal work force. Mr. Stanley did not respond to a request for comment.