2nd UPDATE: Obama Meets With Bank CEOs Ahead Of G20 Summit
March 27 2009 - 12:59PM
Dow Jones News
President Barack Obama is meeting with the leaders of top U.S.
banks Friday, a session that will focus on the White House's drive
to overhaul financial regulations and on thorny issues like
executive compensation.
The meeting, which started at noon in the State Dining Room,
comes days before Obama leaves for the Group of 20 summit in
London.
"The President will reiterate his belief that getting the
economy back on track will require an understanding that each of us
must look beyond our own short-term interests to the wider set of
obligations we have to each other in order for America to succeed,"
the White House said in a statement.
The White House said JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of
America CEO Ken Lewis, American Express CEO Ken Chenault, Freddie
Mac CEO John Koskinen, State Street CEO Ronald Logue, BONY-Mellon
CEO Robert Kelly, Northern Trust CEO Rick Waddell, PNC CEO James
Rohr, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John
Mack, Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, and
USBancorp CEO Richard Davis are attending the meeting.
Cam Fine of the Independent Community Bankers and Edward
Yingling of the American Bankers Association also are
participating.
"The president's not going in with a real agenda," White House
economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told CNBC Friday. "I think likely
he wants to do two things. One is get a sense from them about what
is the state of the financial markets, what's the state of the
economy from where they sit. But two, convey to them his
long-standing view that, you know, we've all got to be in this
thing together."
The executives didn't take reporters' questions as they arrived
at the White House shortly before noon.
Earlier this week, the Treasury Department unveiled its plans to
help banks remove toxic assets from their balance sheets as well as
sweeping proposals to enhance regulations over the financial
sector.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama, who has struck a
populist tone on the controversy over American International Group
Inc.'s bonuses, won't change his message behind closed doors.
"The president isn't going to say one thing out here and a
different thing in there," Gibbs said Thursday. "We're not going to
get out of this financial crisis and we're not going to stabilize
our financial system without healthy banks."
-By Henry J. Pulizzi, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9256;
henry.pulizzi@dowjones.com