Fannie Mae, the largest buyer of U.S. mortgages, announced an intention to hire former New York Federal Reserve President William McDonough as chief executive officer, said people familiar with the matter.

The government-chartered mortgage finance company has also discussed the appointment to this post with William Shea, the former chief executive of insurer Conseco Inc., and Phil Gramm, a former Republican senator from Texas, according to these people.

Fannie Mae has been looking for a chief executive since Franklin Raines was dismissed in December after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proved that the Washington-based company violated accounting rules. Concerns that Congress will keep its growth under control have made Fannie’s stock decline 23 percent this year.

Fannie Mae ``has to get a new CEO soon,’’ said Marshall Front, chairman of Chicago-based Front Barnett Associates, which have 463,000 Fannie Mae shares, according to Bloomberg.``They have to do that in order to restore their strength and credibility because they are in for a fight.’’

Brian Faith, a Fannie Mae spokesman, refused to provide any comment.

Fannie Mae and the smaller Freddie Mac were funded by Congress to promote home ownership. The publicly traded companies purchase mortgages from banks and convert them into securities in order to sell them to investors. Together they keep about half the $7.6 trillion mortgage market under control and have more than $1.7 trillion of debt, second in the U.S. only to the government.

Fannie Mae’s next leader faces slowing growth, three federal accounting probes and pending legislation in Congress that would create tougher oversight. Earnings may fall this year for the first time since 1985, according to the average estimate of analysts of Thomson Financial.