(Archived Content)
The President today announced his intention to nominate John D. Hawke, Jr. as the 28th Comptroller of the Currency. The Office of the Comptroller, which was created in 1863 as part of the Treasury Department, administers the national banking system.
Mr. Hawke has served since June 1995 as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department. In that role, he oversees policy and legislation in the areas of financial institutions, Treasury securities and public debt management, capital markets, government financial management services, federal lending, and government sponsored enterprises. He serves on the board of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and chairs the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Steering Committee, an interagency group that addresses policy questions involving counterfeiting and currency design.
Prior to joining the Treasury Department, Mr. Hawke was a Senior Partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Arnold and Porter, where he headed the financial institutions practice. He joined the firm as an associate in 1962 and was elected a partner in 1967. From 1987 to 1995 he served as chairman of the firm. In 1975 he left the firm to serve as General Counsel to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, returning to Arnold and Porter in 1978.
From 1970 to 1987 Mr. Hawke was an adjunct professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught federal regulation of banking. He also taught courses on bank acquisitions and financial regulation at the Columbia University School of Law and at the Boston Center for Banking Law Studies, where he serves as Chairman of the Board of Advisors of the Morin Center for Banking Law Studies. He is the author of Commentaries on Banking Regulation, published in 1985.
Mr. Hawke came to Washington in 1960 as a law clerk to Judge E. Barrett Prettyman on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. From 1961 to 1962 he served as counsel to the Select Subcommittee on Education in the House of Representatives.
Mr. Hawke received his B.A. from Yale University and his LL.B. from Columbia University School of Law. From 1955 to 1957, he served on active duty with the U.S. Air Force.
The Comptroller of the Currency is responsible for regulating and supervising the national banking system and the federally licensed branches and agencies of foreign banks doing business in the United States. This includes overseeing the organization, operation, and liquidation of national banks; reviewing and approving the organization of new national banks, the conversion of state-chartered banks into national banks, the establishment of branches by national banks, and consolidations or mergers of banks where the continuing institution is a national bank. In addition, the Comptroller serves as a member of the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a member of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, and a member of the board of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation.