Elizabeth McCaul is a partner in the New York office of Promontory Financial Group, where she advises on financial and regulatory strategy. She joined Promontory after serving as the Superintendent of Banks of the State of New York.
Her responsibilities as New York Superintendent of Banks from April 7, 1997 to April 2, 2003 included supervision of some of the world's largest institutions, most of the foreign banks operating in the United States, as well as community banks, mortgage companies, and the overseas banking activities of investment banks and insurance companies. Total assets subject to NYS supervision were approximately $2 trillion. She added capital markets specialists to the examination teams, established targeted hedge fund reviews, opened a Tokyo office, and helped banks and securities firms comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act.
During her tenure as Superintendent, her office established a New York State Holocaust Claims Processing Office to assist and advocate on behalf of Holocaust survivors and their heirs who were trying to recover assets wrongfully held or stolen in World War II. Her office blocked a proposed merger of the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corporation in 1998 until the banks promised to cooperate on the return of victim's assets.[1][2]
McCaul served as Chairman of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors in 2001 to 2002, and was a member of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council in 2002 to 2003,[3] and participated in the Joint Forum for Financial Conglomerates. She was an instructor on Corporate Governance at the Financial Stability Institute at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
In addition, McCaul directed a $22 billion banker's bank following its liquidity problems. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, she worked with banks, securities firms and the Federal Reserve to get the U.S. markets reopened and functioning properly. She subsequently worked with federal regulators and law enforcement officials to create mechanisms to help guard against the use of the U.S. banking system for financial terrorism.[4] Her office also sought to curb excessive fees for sub-prime mortgages in the absence of federal efforts to address these practices.[5]
McCaul was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs & Co. from 1985 to 1995. She graduated from Boston University with a B.A., and had a scholarship to the Common Market Program at the Institute of European Studies in Freiburg, Germany. [6]