Public RelationsUS bank chiefs to testify at crisis panel meet
The chief executive officers of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley will headline the inaugural hearing of a congressional panel investigating Wall Street’s financial crisis.
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JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein and Morgan Stanley’s John Mack would testify next month in Washington, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Chairman Phil Angelides said. Bank of America Corp’s incoming CEO Brian Moynihan, has been invited and was expected to appear as well, Angelides said.
“There’s no question that these institutions were at the center of this storm, not to make any prejudgments about their role in it,” Angelides said. He called the witnesses “key leaders who have been involved in the financial crisis.”
The hearing on January 13 and 14 will kick off the public work of the crisis commission, which was appointed by Congress in July. Privately, the 10-member panel has been meeting with administration officials including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Schapiro.
Publicly, it has taken criticism over the pace of its work. The group’s website remains under development and the commission only recently hired an investigative staff. It is required to file its final report by next December.
‘Set the tone’
“Its hard to say where you should begin,” said commission’s Vice-President Bill Thomas. The January hearing “was appropriate to set the tone and direction,” Thomas said.
Banking industry testimony would be followed by analysis from academics and others over the course of the two-day hearing, Thomas said.
“We aren’t just bringing people in to give their story and leave,” he said.
The commission was created by Congress to examine the causes of a collapse that roiled global markets and led to a $700-billion US government bailout of the nation’s banks. Issues such as subprime lending, the activities of credit-rating companies and executive pay would be discussed, Angelides said. The Obama administration has directed regulators to cooperate with its requests for information.
The commission has vowed a thorough inquiry and will hear from “hundreds” of witnesses over the next year, Angelides said.
Scope of witnesses
“We’ll be calling private- and public-sector folks who over the course of the last two years have been involved in the center of this crisis,” Angelides said of future hearings.
Bank of America spokesman Lawrence Di Rita, in an e-mail, noted that the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company is in transition and said its executives look forward to working with the commission. Bank of America this month announced that Moynihan would take the company reins as of January 1, replacing Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis, who will retire December 31.
New York-based Goldman and Morgan Stanley didn’t immediately return calls requesting comment.
The commission, led by Californians Angelides, a Democrat and former state treasurer, and Thomas, a Republican and former US House member, is armed with an $8-million budget and subpoena power.