SIFMA Regulatory Reform Summit Opens With Neal Wolin as Keynote

By Kate McBride

July 15, 2010 at 08:00 PM

Share & Print

In an ironic coincidence, SIFMA's Regulatory Reform Summit opened Thursday, July 15, a day that sweeping reforms of America's financial system passed in the Senate.

"Later today the Senate will pass historic financial reforms, sending them to President Obama for his signature," said SIFMA President and CEO Timothy Ryan, setting the tone for the summit in New York.

This is an "important step forward for the American economy," especially in the areas of "systemic risk [oversight] with the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a fiduciary standard of care … providing added confidence and modernizing the regulatory structure."

SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) will "focus on how to [create] credit, strengthen the economy and create jobs and will do so within the framework voted on by the Senate."

Ryan introduced the keynote speaker, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Neal Wolin, who said we are "on the cusp of the final Senate vote," giving regulators the ability to "identify and manage systemic risk in a way that had not been done before."

It will "end too big to fail," enabling the FDIC to unwind failing institutions in a process "modeled on the FDIC resolution process," Wolin said. "No firm will be insulated from its actions," he added, and "taxpayers will never be asked to bear the cost of a financial firm's failure."

While "reasonable people will disagree on some details," as reform is implemented, Wolin continued, this will leave the system "far less prone to panic and collapse."

NOT FOR REPRINT