Robert G. Rowe 3d jumped to the Independent Bankers Association of America from the American Bankers Association last week.
Mr. Rowe is the IBAA's new regulatory counsel. Since September 1993, he had been associate director of the ABA's Center for Legal and Regulatory Compliance.
Mr. Rowe will report to Karen M. Thomas, who last month was named the IBAA's director of regulatory affairs and senior regulatory counsel. Ms. Thomas effectively is taking Diane Casey's place, though without her title of executive director. Ms. Casey left the trade group in March to start a bank consulting practice at Grant Thornton.
Stephen Trafton, chairman of California's Glendale Federal Bank, is about to take a break from his lobbying efforts on behalf of the Savings Association Insurance Fund.
The thrift executive is planning a new expedition to the Canadian High Arctic region, an area he has spent years exploring and mapping. Mr. Trafton's main interest is in charting the ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin, the British explorer who died in the Arctic nearly 150 years ago.
"I want to relive it," he said of the expedition. Last year, Mr. Trafton's group found and mapped the site where the Franklin group made summer camp in 1846.
Mr. Trafton, who visits Washington monthly to make a case for helping the thrift fund, has already made 18 expeditions to the Arctic.
Charles M. Chamness, director of public affairs at the Federal Housing Finance Board, has been named vice president of public affairs at the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, the Indianapolis-based trade group for 1,200 property and casualty insurance companies in the United States and Canada.
