Press Release
William Rutledge to Retire as Head of Bank Supervision, Effective December 31
July 22, 2010
NEW YORK—William L. Rutledge, executive vice president and head of Bank Supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, today announced his intention to retire at the end of this year.

"The passage of regulatory reform is an important milestone that creates new challenges and opportunities for Bank Supervision," said Mr. Rutledge. "After having spent many wonderful years at the New York Fed, I believe this is the right moment to announce the change to pass the torch on to a new generation of leadership in the Group at year-end."

Mr. Rutledge joined the Bank in 1974 as an economist in the banking studies department and held many senior positions within the Bank Supervision Group, including those with management responsibility for financial examinations, banking applications, specialized examinations, compliance, supervision support, community affairs and foreign banks. He was appointed head of the Group in 1999.

William C. Dudley, president and chief executive officer of the New York Fed, said: "I pay tribute to Bill's 36 years of service at the Bank and more than ten years of leadership of the Bank Supervision Group. He has made many important contributions to our policies and practices in Bank Supervision. These include numerous innovations in risk assessment practices and the development of horizontal reviews, which were a critical building block for the successful bank stress tests undertaken last year."

"Bill has also played a major role in working with other regulators here and abroad to facilitate the exchange of supervisory information and insights and to harmonize supervisory expectations and regulatory standards internationally," Mr. Dudley added.

During Mr. Rutledge's time as head of Bank Supervision, the New York Fed developed a specialist approach to supervising banks involving experts in credit risk, market risk, operational and compliance risk, as well as relationship managers. The Bank also pioneered the concept of horizontal reviews, evaluating cross sections of firms to determine current best practices in the sector to provide perspective for supervising individual firms and to inform policymakers on the need for changing broad policies.

Following the onset of the financial crisis in 2007-08, the New York Fed worked to incorporate macroeconomic and financial markets insight more deeply into its supervisory activities. In early 2009, the Bank Supervision Group under Mr. Rutledge's leadership played an important role in the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program–known as the bank "stress tests"–that helped to restore confidence in the U.S. financial system.

Also, during the early stages of the crisis, Mr. Rutledge helped found the Senior Supervisors Group of global supervisors to assess risk management practices of major global financial services firms and to exchange insights into the supervision of major international financial services firms. Under his chairmanship, the Group, which now includes 12 agencies from 10 countries, has issued a number of highly regarded reports drawing lessons from the financial crisis, including Observations on Risk Management Practices during the Recent Market Turbulence (3/06/08) pdf and Risk Management Lessons Learned from the Global Banking Crisis of 2008 (10/21/09) pdf.

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