T. Timothy Ryan Jr.

T. Timothy Ryan Jr. is President & Chief Executive Officer of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), which bills itself as the leading trade association representing 680 global financial markets participants.

Biography

Mr. Ryan's biography from the SIFMA website:

Mr. Ryan is President & Chief Executive Officer of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). SIFMA is the leading trade association representing 680 global financial markets participants. SIFMA operates from New York, Washington DC, London and Hong Kong with approximately 200 employees. It brings together financial industry experts from banks, broker/dealers, institutional investors, and retail private clients. The association develops industry positions through over 100 product/sector committees. It then advocates these positions to regulators, legislators, courts, multinational governmental organizations and the media. The association conducts over 60 educational conferences a year.

Prior to joining SIFMA, Mr. Ryan was Vice Chairman, Financial Institutions and Governments, at J.P. Morgan where he was a member of the firm’s senior leadership. Mr. Ryan is a director of Lloyds Banking Group, Lloyds TSB Bank plc, HBOS plc, Bank of Scotland plc, Putnam Investments, LLC, Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company and The U.S.-Japan Foundation. He is also a private sector member of the Global Markets Advisory Committee for the National Intelligence Council (NIC). From 2002 to 2004, Mr. Ryan was a member of the US-Japan Private Sector/Government Commission with responsibility for Corporate Restructuring and NPL workout. Mr. Ryan also served from 2000 to 2004 as a Board Member and Chairman of the Audit Committee at Koram Bank in Seoul, Korea.

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 1993, Mr. Ryan was the Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, U.S. Department of the Treasury. As OTS Director, Mr. Ryan was principal manager of the savings and loan cleanup which involved closing approximately 700 insolvent institutions, improving capital bases and selling over $300 billion of assets. Mr. Ryan was a Director of the Resolution Trust Corporation and a Director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. From 1983 to 1990, Mr. Ryan was a Partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay, where he headed the Pension Investment Group and was a member of the firm's Executive Committee. From 1981 to 1983 Mr. Ryan was Solicitor of Labor, U.S. Department of Labor. Mr. Ryan is a graduate of Villanova University and American University Law School. He served as an officer in the U.S. Army from 1967 – 1970.

Record and Controversy

• Positive reinforcement for Secretary Paulson's 2008 then-unapproved plan for bailouts: "I agree totally with Secretary Paulson -- give us the money, give us the authority." CNBC, Sept. 26 2008.  

• Developing a narrative for the $787 billion TARP bailout: "I think everyone is really confused. This is not a bailout for Wall Street. This is a relief package for Main Street." CNBC, Sept. 26 2008.

• On embarrassingly large bank bonuses: "Are we sorry about what happened, we are. Are we into massive reform, we are. The compensation that you see come out in a few weeks will be massively different ... The system is really changing radically and we're not getting any credit for these reforms at all." CNBC, Jan. 11 2010.  

• When SIFMA lost Lehman Brothers' membership dues, it laid off 25% of its lobbying staff and commiserated with suffering American workers: "No one, least of all our industry, which lost tens of thousands of jobs, wants to repeat the difficulties of the past 18 months." USA Today, Aug. 6, 2009.  

• Fear-mongering on a Financial Transactions Tax which would rein in speculative trading: "As all of you know. basically, Main Street is supported by activities in the financial sector. We need obviously jobs ... jobs should be the number one objective. This type of tax is totally counterproductive." CNBC, Dec. 4, 2009.

• On SIFMA's on-line games train American youth in fun ways to manipulate the stock market: "Indeed, the industry’s overall contribution to charitable organizations far exceeds those of many other industries ... Increasingly, the struggles of the industry and the market have translated into greater interest in SIFMA’s Stock Market Game, which takes place among both students and teachers. Each year, we now have more than 800,000 students play. That adds up to more than 12 million students over the life of the program." Tim Ryan Annual Speech, Dec. 14, 2009.  

• On the death and life of too-big-to-fail: "Second, we need to ensure no financial firm is too big or too interconnected to fail. In a dynamic capitalist system, every firm must be allowed to fail. To solve this problem, Bank of England governor Mervyn King recently suggested that the largest banks be broken-up. We disagree totally with that view." Tim Ryan Annual Speech, Dec. 14, 2009.

Treasury Department nomination

Mr. Ryan was nominated to be the Department of the Treasury's Undersecretary for international affairs, but withdrew himself from consideration in April, 2007, because of "problems over his financial portfolio." At the time he was vice chairman of financial institutions and governments at J.P. Morgan Chase.

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Contact Details

Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA)
Washington, D.C.:
1101 New York Avenue, NW, 8th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
(ph) +1.202.962.7300
(fx) +1.202.962.7305

Website: http://www.sifma.org/

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• banking

External resources

• Tim Ryan Bio at American Securitization Forum.