The Clearing House Forms Academic Advisory Council to Study Critical Issues Facing Global Banking System

NEW YORK, March 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Clearing House today announced the formation of the Academic Advisory Council (AAC), which pairs distinguished scholars from the nation's top academic institutions with leaders from the financial industry, to analyze key issues facing the global financial system, including bank capital and liquidity, systemic risk and bank regulatory reform.

In addition to working collaboratively on quantitative research and thought leadership, the AAC will also bring together industry leaders and renowned scholars through symposiums to exchange views on issues of critical importance.

"The role of the Academic Advisory Council is to serve as a premier forum for thought leadership in the commercial banking industry," said Paul Saltzman, President of The Clearing House Association.  "Constructive dialogue among academics, policymakers and commercial banks of all sizes will create a stronger, more competitive banking system, and we believe the formation of the AAC is precisely the medium required to enhance the intellectual content and empirical framework of this dialogue."  

The Council's initial sponsored event, a conference on measuring systemic risk, was hosted by the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank in December.  The AAC sponsored its second event on February 10 with the launch of the University of North Carolina Center for Banking and Finance New York Lecture Series on the topic of preemption, a doctrine in law that asserts the supremacy of federal legislation over state law on the same subject.  Planned events for 2011 include the UNC School of Law's Banking Institute on March 31-April 1 and a bank capital and liquidity conference hosted by Stanford University on June 3.  In addition, the AAC anticipates sponsoring events hosted by Columbia University's Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy.  

"The formation of the Academic Advisory Council comes at an important time for the global financial system," said Robert Johnson, Co-Chair of the AAC and Executive Vice President and General Counsel of BB&T.  "As the world economies continue to recover from the recession, leaders from the banking and academic communities will have a unique and valuable opportunity to exchange information and ideas on topics of critical importance to banks of all sizes."

The members of the Academic Advisory Council include:

• Gregory Baer, General Counsel for Corporate and Global Regulatory of JP Morgan Chase

• Lissa Broome, Wachovia Professor of Banking Law and Director of the Center for Banking and Finance at UNC

• Darrell Duffie, Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business

• Paul Glasserman, Jack R. Anderson Professor of Business at Columbia University

• Lars Peter Hansen, Director, Milton Friedman Institute and David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago

• Robert Johnson, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of BB&T

• Anil Kashyap, Co-Director, Initiative on Global Markets and Edward Eagle Brown Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business

• Michael Klausner, Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business and Law at Stanford Law School

• Mickey Levy, Chief Economist at Bank of America

• Andrew Lo, Director, MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering and Harris & Harris Group Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Evan Picoult, Managing Director, Risk Architecture at Citigroup

• Anthony Santomero, Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company

• Peter Schnall, Chief Risk Officer of Capital One

• John Silvia, Chief Economist at Wells Fargo Bank

• Zion Shohet, Executive Vice President, Financial Reform at Citibank

About The Clearing House Association

Established in 1853, The Clearing House is the nation's oldest banking association and payments company.  It is owned by the world's largest commercial banks, which employ 1.4 million people in the United States and hold more than half of all U.S. deposits.  The Clearing House Association is a nonpartisan advocacy organization representing through regulatory comment letters, amicus briefs and white papers the interests of its owner banks on a variety of systemically important banking issues.  The Clearing House Payments Company provides payment, clearing, and settlement services to its member banks and other financial institutions, clearing almost $2 trillion daily and representing nearly half of the automated clearing-house, funds transfer and check image payments made in the U.S.  See The Clearing House's web page at www.theclearinghouse.org.

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SOURCE The Clearing House Association