Richard Carnell.

Richard S. Carnell has spent the past seven years restructuring the banking industry.

As a top Senate Banking Committee aide, Mr. Carnell has played a major role in every piece of domestic banking legislation to pass Congress since 1987. That includes the Competitive Equality Banking Act, the 1989 thrift bailout, and 1991 's much-reviled (by bankers, at least) Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Improvement Act.

Today his mandate is broader than ever. As assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions, Mr. Carnell can now help set the agenda for the House and Senate banking committees.

And he plans to use that power to change the industry. Although he won't discuss Treasury's future plans, the administration has been ambitious in its early outings on the Hill, pressing for legislation to consolidate the banking agencies and to create a network of community development banks.

The consolidation effort crashed and burned, despite a prolonged campaign on its behalf by Mr. Carnell and his boss, Treasury Under Secretary Frank Newman. But the community development bank bill though rewritten in significant ways by the banking committees is on the verge of enactment.

Mr. Carnell studied law at Harvard University. He joined the Federal Reserve Board in 1984 and jumped to the Senate Banking Committee in 1987, just as it was about to make a stab at rescuing the thrift insurance fund."

Richard Carnell

Assistant secretary for financial institutions

Department of the Treasury

1500 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Washington, D.C. 20220

202-622-2600

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