WASHINGTON – John S. Reed, temporarily leading the New York Stock Exchange, said on his first day on the job Monday that the exchange should be overhauled before the makeup of its board is changed.

Reed, who was meeting with Securities and Exchange Commission chairman William Donaldson, denied a news report that he was expected to try to remove Wall Street chief executives from the board to reduce potential conflicts of interest.

“I have given no thought to the composition of the board,” Reed said. He said the news report “has zero foundation from me.”

Alterations in board membership “should follow from the governance changes” in how the exchange conducts itself, Reed told reporters before his meeting with Donaldson, who has been pushing for reforms by the exchange.

Reed recently suggested that the 27-seat board be pared down to about a dozen members. He said Monday he nonetheless rejected “this idea that we should simply throw out everyone on the board who’s from the financial community.”

The board’s composition and vulnerability to conflicts of interest have been cited frequently by critics of the NYSE, and some observers believe it is inevitable that several directors will step down. The board includes six chief executives from major Wall Street firms, including Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

It was Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Henry Paulson who recently floated the idea of removing the CEOs from the board.

Managers of big state pension funds, investor advocates and politicians have been urging change in recent weeks.

“The composition of the committees is still critical,” Brandon Rees, a research analyst in the AFL-CIO’s investment office, said Monday after Reed spoke.

Reed, former co-CEO of Citigroup, was drafted by the NYSE board as interim chairman after Chairman Dick Grasso resigned Sept. 17 amid a public furor over his $187.5 million pay package.

Reed, appearing with Donaldson at the SEC chief’s office, said he wanted to move quickly on the overhaul process, and proposals would be vetted by the SEC. An earlier set of proposals by the NYSE doesn’t go far enough, Reed said, but it would be foolish to discard them without careful study.

H. Carl McCall, who resigned as lead NYSE director last Thursday, was presiding over a meeting Monday in which directors would hear public testimony and consider ways to improve the exchange.

Following McCall’s unexpected resignation, news came Sunday that Daimler-Chrysler chairman and CEO Juergen Schrempp also is leaving the board in the aftermath of the outcry over Grasso’s compensation.