Trump chooses regional banker as key regulator for U.S. banks

President Donald Trump has chosen a regional banker as his nominee for a key government position in bank regulation.

Trump announced late Monday named Joseph Otting as comptroller of the currency, heading a Treasury Department agency that is the chief overseer for federally chartered banks. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency charters and supervises national banks and savings and loans. The agency has hundreds of bank examiners, many of them working inside the nation’s largest financial institutions, who focus closely on lending practices.

If confirmed by the Senate, Otting will play a role in the Trump administration’s efforts to ease rules written under the Dodd-Frank law that stiffened financial regulation after the 2008-09 crisis.

According to a recent geopolitical briefing from National Bank of Canada, the Trump administration is already “making significant headway on the regulatory front.” It notes, “What makes regulatory reform a particularly juicy target is that changes can often be made without congressional approval.”

The report comments on Trump’s move to, “in many cases, nominate people from the private sector to lead the very regulatory agencies they spent years opposing. This is in line with what Trump strategist Steve Bannon has called the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state.'”

Since January, the U.S. leader has been busy implementing what report calls his “deregulation agenda.” During the first month of the year, Trump “signed an executive order freezing all pending rules and regulations pending further review,” and that was followed by ordering federal agencies to “eliminate two regulations for each new one created” and “find costly regulations to cut.”

Read the full report for more on how Trump’s moves are impacting the financial sector as well as the energy space.

More about Otting

Otting was CEO of OneWest Bank from 2010 to 2015 , where he worked with then-chairman Steven Mnuchin, who is now Treasury secretary. Democrats who objected to Mnuchin’s appointment as Treasury chief accused him of running a “foreclosure machine” when he headed the big California-based bank (the bank foreclosed on thousands of homeowners in the aftermath of the housing crisis caused by high-risk mortgages).

Mnuchin, who led an investor group that bought the failed IndyMac bank in 2009 and turned it into a profitable OneWest, has defended his actions as the bank’s chairman. He has said he worked hard during the financial crisis to help homeowners with refinancing mortgages so they could remain in their homes.

Before he worked at OneWest, Otting was vice chairman of U.S. Bancorp, parent of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, one of the largest banks in the country.

With Otting’s appointment, Trump has continued filling out his key team of financial regulators, as his administration looks to easing rules and meet his campaign promises. Republicans have long complained that regulations were made too restrictive following the financial meltdown and have hampered economic growth by making it harder for banks to lend.

Jay Clayton, a Wall Street lawyer with ties to Goldman Sachs, is now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission after Trump chose him to lead the market watchdog agency. Trump has three vacancies to fill on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, including the key slot that holds the portfolio of bank supervision.

For this part, Otting would replace Keith Noreika, a financial services lawyer who was installed last month as acting comptroller in an unusual move apparently aimed at avoiding Senate confirmation and normal ethics requirements.

Noreika succeeded Thomas Curry, an Obama appointee, who had been comptroller since 2012 and leaned toward strict bank oversight.

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