Benjamin Lawsky, New York state’s first superintendent of financial services, said in a recent interview that he plans on naming names as part of his continuing effort to clean up Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis.
“Corporations are a legal fiction,” Lawsky told Financial Times reporter Kara Scannell in an interview published online late Sunday. “You have to deter bad individual conduct within corporations. People who did the conduct are going to be held accountable.”
Added Lawsky: “We think about it most in the area where there has been some sort of intentional misconduct as opposed to a systemic, industrywide problem.”
In addition to watchdogging bad behavior, Lawsky’s job also gives him responsibility for luring financial companies to New York. Created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2011 by merging the state’s banking and insurance departments, the Department of Financial Services’ mission is to “reform the regulation of financial services in New York to keep pace with the rapid and dynamic evolution of these industries, to guard against financial crises and to protect consumers and markets from fraud.”
According to the FT story, Lawsky has taken steps to show that he is keeping pace. In addition to tweeting regularly, he recently fielded questions during a two-hour Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session on the subject of bitcoin. Lawsky has begun to formulate regulations for the digital currency that are aimed at encouraging bitcoin exchanges to operate in New York.
