EU Central Bank Taps Former Goldman Sachs Banker As Regulator

The European Central Bank (ECB) has brought on Elizabeth McCaul as a banking supervisor, according to a report by Reuters.

McCaul is a former banker at Goldman Sachs, and is known for an audit of the bank at the Vatican, which was rocked by scandal. 

The ECB hired a total of three new representatives to serve on the Single Supervisory Board, an organization that serves as a watchdog for 114 of the region’s biggest banks.

McCaul is coming from the Promontory Financial Group, a consultancy firm in the United States that paid $15 million to the banking regulator in New York in 2015 to settle an accusation that it whitewashed a Standard Chartered Bank report. 

During her time at Promontory Financial Group, McCaul helped to audit the Vatican’s bank after Pope Francis mandated a cleanup of the institution in 2013. She also did some consulting for the ECB while it set up the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Promontory is now owned by IBM.

McCaul was previously the superintendent of banks for New York State, a position she took after working for Goldman Sachs for 10 years. She is married to Goldman Sachs Partner Frank Ingrassia and the couple has seven children together. 

Also on the supervisory board will be former French banking watchdog member Edouard Fernandez-Bollo and Kerstin af Jochnick, who was previously the deputy governor of the Swedish central bank. 

Some of the vacancies had been left unfilled for more than a year, according to Bloomberg.

The organization was saddled with four of its top positions empty after Sabine Lautenschlaeger and Ignazio Angeloni left earlier in the year.

In the meantime, ECB Executive Board member Yves Mersch was put in the supervisor’s vice chair, but the nomination hasn’t been confirmed yet.

The positions had been empty during the preparations for Brexit and the risks that were associated with it. The board includes members of all the 19 national authorities in the area as well as ECB appointees.