Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Former SEC Chair, Mary Schapiro
In addition to collecting her $250,000 for sitting on the Board of General Electric, former SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, who left the SEC post in December, will be hanging her shingle at Promontory Financial Group LLC as a managing director. The firm has not disclosed the amount of her compensation.
Promontory’s founder, Eugene Ludwig, was formerly the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) from 1993 to 1998. The OCC is the primary regulator of national banks. Before becoming head of the OCC, Ludwig was a partner at the corporate law firm, Covington & Burling, the firm where former head of the criminal division of the Justice Department, Lanny Breuer, returned earlier this year. The Justice Department has been heavily criticized for failing to prosecute Wall Street banks or their top executives.
The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, also hails from Covington & Burling. Former OCC chief, John Dugan, who served at the OCC from 2005 to 2010, also came from and returned to Covington & Burling. Prior to joining the OCC as its head, Dugan was a registered bank lobbyist.
Ludwig founded Promontory in 2001. In 2006, Ludwig was listed on a Federal lobbying disclosure form as a lobbyist for General Motors on an issue before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as part of his work for Promontory. The company was paid $3.4 million by General Motors for the 2006 lobbying engagement. It earned additional sums from GM in subsequent years. Another Promontory lobbyist, Colleen Brennan, lobbied the SEC in 2006 on behalf of TD Ameritrade, a securities firm.
In more recent years, Promontory’s business model has evolved from lobbyist to self-styled privatized regulator-for-hire. One of its engagements was selection as one of the firms hired by the OCC and Federal Reserve to review foreclosure files by banks found to have engaged in abusive foreclosure practices. As we previously reported, that process has a strong stench. Below is an excerpt of our earlier report:
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