Lawsky Successor's Law-Firm Chops Signal Shift at New York's DFS
- Cuomo nominates Vullo to run Department of Financial Services
- Appointment follows Wall Street criticism of harsh enforcement
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Governor Andrew Cuomo signaled a shift in New York’s oversight of Wall Street, tapping a longtime corporate lawyer to run the state banking regulator previously overseen by an aggressive career law enforcer.
Cuomo on Thursday nominated Maria Vullo, a 52-year-old attorney, to run the state’s banking and insurance regulator, the Department of Financial Services. That came more than six months after the exit of the regulator’s first chief, Benjamin Lawsky, whose shadow continues to hang over the office. In four years, Lawsky extracted $6 billion in settlements from financial institutions, threatened to pull the charters of some of the world’s biggest banks and broke ranks with other enforcers by aggressively pursuing settlements.