The Federal Reserve Bank of New York Wednesday released the
daily agenda for its president, William Dudley, dating back to
January 2009--a period that encompassed the tail end of the
financial crisis that began the previous autumn, during which the
Fed fought to manage the tottering banks and brokerages it helps
oversee.
Dudley's agenda reveals that the president of the largest
Federal Reserve Bank was in close contact with the heads of New
York's biggest financial institutions and with counterparts around
the world. The schedule also shows his interactions with corporate
titans outside of Wall Street, as well as frequent meetings with
journalists and politicians.
A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) economist who took the
top New York Fed job when Timothy Geithner left to become secretary
of the U.S. Treasury, Dudley had numerous meetings with executives
from his former firm during the most frenzied days of the crisis.
According to the records, he met several times in early 2009 with
Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, one-on-one as well as with other
Goldman leaders. Dudley also made time to meet his Goldman
successor, economist Jan Hatzius, more than once at a bar called
the Pound & Pence near the New York Fed's downtown
headquarters.
In reference to the meetings, bank spokesman Jeffrey V. Smith
said, "In order to effectively perform his public duties, the New
York Fed president must meet regularly with market participants,
fellow regulators, the heads of institutions supervised by the Fed,
members of advisory committees on small business and the regional
economy, international officials and many others."
In the weeks before the government revamped its rescue of
American International Group Inc. (AIG) in March 2009 to bring the
total value of the financial injection for AIG to $182.3
billion--Dudley had multiple discussions with and about the
insurance company, according to the schedule.
Starting on Feb. 11, 2009, he met with AIG executives, including
then-CEO Edward Liddy, to "discuss what's next for AIG." The
schedule then lists conversations and discussions on Feb. 18 and
Feb. 19 leading up to the March 2 announcement by the government
that it was easing some terms of the rescue and giving it further
access to the Troubled Asset Relief Program. All told, he met with
AIG officials two dozen times during the period covered by the
agenda.
Also noteworthy, he met with Citigroup Inc. (C) CEO Vikram
Pandit on Feb. 23, just four days before the government converted
its $25 billion in preferred stock in that company into common
stock. Nineteen days before that, he met with former Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin, who had just resigned from a senior
advisory role at Citigroup.
On May 5, 2009, Dudley had individual meetings scheduled with
seven institutions that went through the Fed's so-called stress
tests, 2 days before the results were made public. The institutions
Dudley was scheduled to meet with were Citigroup, Bank of New York
Mellon Corp. (BK), Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM),
Morgan Stanley (MS), American Express Co. (AXP) and MetLife Inc.
(MET).
Bank of America, JPMorgan, and Citi declined to comment on
discussions with regulators.
Dudley also had meetings with officials from the People's Bank
of China, including during a March 2010 trip to China in which he
also met with representatives of the powerful sovereign wealth fund
China Investment Corp.
One area of focus for the New York Fed President's agenda was
the regulation of derivatives, a looming issue that has consumed
Washington as Congress debated the new Dodd-Frank financial
regulation overhaul legislation. Many of Dudley's meetings on
derivatives reform were with Theo Lubke, who spent 15 years at the
Fed before joining Goldman as its chief regulatory reform officer
earlier this month.
Geithner came under scrutiny for his close ties to the banking
industry during his confirmation hearing to become Treasury
secretary last year. Republican senators raised questions about
Geithner's involvement in the design and implementation of TARP, as
well as his role in J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s (JPM) purchase of
Bear Stearns, Bank of America Corp.'s (BAC) acquisitions of
Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, the rescues of Citigroup
and AIG, and the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
(LEHMQ).
The hour-by-hour agenda reveals only scant details about what
was discussed during Dudley's long days, which began with a bank
car picking him up at 6:15 a.m.
On Feb. 11, 2009, for instance, Dudley had a conference call
with German car maker Daimler AG's (DDAIY, DAI.XE) chief financial
officer, Bodo Uebber, and its treasurer, Michael Muehlbayer. He
then met with Robert Kidder, a board member at Morgan Stanley (MS);
interviewed several job candidates for Fed positions; spent 45
minutes with an executive coach, Vicki Brooks; and took in a
Federal Open Market Committee meeting in the Fed's boardroom, in
addition to meeting with AIG executives.
Dudley met four times with H. Rodgin Cohen, then the chairman of
Sullivan and Cromwell LLP, known as the dean of New York's
corporate lawyers. Cohen said he did not recall the details of his
meetings with Dudley, but they had "nothing to do with pleading for
a client. That would be highly inappropriate."
He also met with several prominent investors, including a "lunch
roundtable" with hedge fund SAC Capital on February 9, 2009, and a
meeting with David M. Rubenstein, managing director at the Carlyle
Group, on July 21, 2009. On May 14, 2009, he met with Ken Griffin
and Adam Cooper of Chicago investment group Citadel.
Executives outside the banking world who were on Dudley's
calendar included the chiefs of Pepsi (PEP), Xerox (XRX), Verizon
(VZ), The New York Times Company (NYT), Tishman Speyer (TSO.AU),
and Hess Corp (HES). He and his wife, Ann Darby, had dinner with
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Mayor's longtime companion, Diana
Taylor, at Italian restaurant Da Silvano on February 9, 2009. The
couple also had lunch with Henry Kravis, founder of the buyout firm
Kolhberg, Kravis, and Roberts, and his wife on March 27.
The published agenda, which runs through Sept. 30, 2010,
includes redacted phone numbers and personal contact details as
well as some meeting times listed as "blocked."
The full agenda can be found at
http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/dailyschedules_101229.pdf.
-By Chana R. Schoenberger and David Benoit, Dow Jones Newswires;
212-416-4803; chana.schoenberger@dowjones.com
--Matthias Rieker, Stephen L. Bernard, Serena Ng, and Luca Di
Leo contributed to this article.
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