Institutional Investor quoted me in Will New Attorney General Loretta Lynch Shake up Wall Street? It opens,
Those unhappy with the lack of personal accountability for the 2008–’09 financial crisis are running out of time to see justice served: In the U.S., the statute of limitations for many bank-related criminal charges is ten years. But the recent appointment of Loretta Lynch as the first black woman to the post of attorney general could present a window of opportunity.
Given mounting public frustration over the failure to punish financial executives who helped push the world to the brink of another Great Depression, Lynch may be well positioned to act where her predecessor, Eric Holder, was unsuccessful. The U.S. Department of Justice has often talked up its efforts to hold individuals responsible for crimes they may have committed, but there hasn’t been much progress. Last year, however, saw an uptick in the size of bank settlements related to the crash, including a $16.65 billion deal with Bank of America Corp. and a $7 billion agreement with Citigroup.
Some industry observers believe Lynch, who turns 56 on Thursday, could use this momentum to target people. “If she does anything differently [than Holder did], she may push her folks to try to make those cases against individuals higher up the corporate ladder,” says Glen Kopp, former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and a New York–based partner in the white-collar practice at law firm Bracewell & Giuliani.
Lynch’s critics have griped that she may be not be strict enough with Wall Street. They point to her 1980s stint with law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel, which has counted among its clients BofA, Credit Suisse Group and HSBC Holdings, and to a spell early last decade at Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells), where she practiced white -collar criminal defense.
Detractors say both positions, as well as her tenure at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2005, have compromised her ability to prosecute big banks by establishing relationships that she may not wish to jeopardize as attorney general. During Lynch’s lengthy confirmation process, Republicans criticized her for being too soft on HSBC in a 2012 settlement; the British bank agreed to pay $1.92 billion in a money-laundering case after New York and federal authorities decided that criminal charges might bring down the institution.
But many in the legal community believe the more likely outcome will be somewhere in the middle.
“The financial industry will be dealing with an extremely well-informed AG who will seek to balance the competing concerns that arise when investigating and prosecuting large enterprises like those that dominate Wall Street,” says David Reiss, a professor at Brooklyn Law School with expertise in property, mortgage lending and consumer financial services matters.
