Hawke Has a Pal
Though Senate hearings and confirmation votes must still take place before Texas community banker Donald E. Powell becomes chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., industry sources are already speculating about how his presence could affect the agency's board makeup.
One factor that could make a difference: These sources say that Mr. Powell, the chairman of First National Bank of Amarillo, and Comptroller of the Currency John D. Hawke Jr. go way back.
Mr. Powell hired Mr. Hawke - who was one of the top banking lawyers in the country while a counsel for Arnold & Porter - more than a decade ago when his previous bank was in a financial pinch, these sources said. This could be important because Mr. Powell may be inclined to lobby the White House not to replace Mr. Hawke as comptroller and thus keep him on the FDIC board.
The conventional wisdom has been that Mr. Hawke, who was appointed by former President Clinton, would be replaced by a Bush appointee, though not immediately.
Also helping Mr. Hawke is the fact that the five-member FDIC board may have no more than three members of the same political party. If Mr. Powell is confirmed, that would leave room for one more Republican, so Mr. Hawke could survive if President Bush has a GOP loyalist in mind for another slot on the board.
Mr. Powell declined to comment Friday, except to say that he knew Mr. Hawke and had met him at meetings. A spokesman for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency declined to comment.
New Head for RMA
PNC Bank executive vice president Maurice H. Hartigan will succeed Allen W. Sanborn as president and chief executive officer of RMA, the trade association of bank loan and credit officers, at the end of the month.
Mr. Hartigan, who spent 30 years at Chemical Bank before joining PNC in 1996, would be the sixth president in the history of the 87-year-old group, formerly known as Robert Morris Associates.
Mr. Sanborn, who joined RMA in 1995 after a three-decade career in banking, is retiring and will divide time between New Mexico and Maine.
FTC Chief Departing
Federal Trade Commission chairman Robert Pitofsky announced last week that he would resign from his post, effective next month, and return to his former job in the antitrust division of the Arnold & Porter law firm.
Mr. Pitofsky has been FTC chairman since April 12, 1995, and has been an outspoken proponent of privacy legislation. He will also resume a faculty post at Georgetown University Law Center.
President Bush has nominated Timothy J. Muris, a senior FTC official in the Reagan administration, to succeed Mr. Pitofsky, but he still must be confirmed by the Senate.
30 for Summers
Former Treasury secretary and soon-to-be Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers has been named to fill a vacancy in the Group of 30, a nonprofit, international financial consulting group headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.
GSE Board Nominee
Donald B. Marron, chairman of UBS Paine Webber Inc. has been nominated for one of 13 shareholder-elected seats on Fannie Mae's board of directors.
The board is made up of 13 elected directors, plus five appointed by the U.S. President. Mr. Marron's nomination is to be voted on at the annual shareholders meeting May 22.'
A Leader from Fleet
The ABA Securities Association has elected John R. Bahnken, president and chief operating officer of FleetBoston Financial Corp.'s Fleet Securities Inc., as its president and chairman.
Teaching the Basics
Senate Banking Committee member Jon Corzine, a self-made multimillionaire who worked his way up from a family farm in Illinois to the chairmanship of Goldman Sachs Group, wants to help young people learn what he learned: sound financial practices.
The freshman Democrat from New Jersey this week plans to offer an amendment to a major education funding bill that would establish federal grants for schools to teach financial literacy.
The proposal would create a national clearinghouse so teachers nationwide would have access to materials about such basic financial knowledge as balancing a checkbook, filling out a tax form, or calculating credit card interest.
"We need to instill a sense of fiscal responsibility in our children from a young age so that they are not ambushed by credit card companies offering them 'deals' when they get to college that force them into bankruptcy by the time they are 21," he said.
