Bimal Patel, formerly of O'Melveny & Myers. Courtesy photo

Born three months premature, weighing two pounds and two ounces, Bimal Patel entered life facing long odds of growing up to tell the U.S. Senate of his improbable journey to being nominated for a top U.S. Treasury Department post.

As he told members of the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, he contracted pneumonia at two weeks old. “Doctors,” Patel said, “told my parents that I would never grow past four feet tall, that I would be incapacitated, and that I would die.”

Patel is in line for a top supervisory role at the U.S. Treasury Department—assistant secretary for financial institutions. Since May 2017, Patel has served as deputy assistant secretary for the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a panel created under the Dodd-Frank financial reforms charged with promoting market discipline and responding to emerging risks.

“I am so fortunate that the doctors saved my life and that my parents, particularly my mom, always believed in me,” said Patel, a former top financial regulatory partner at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington.

But his story began years before he was born, when his father left a life as a peanut farmer in rural India to pursue an education in the United States. His father, seated behind him at Thursday's hearing, would go on to receive a Ph.D. from New York University and run a number of small businesses in Georgia while teaching at Spelman College, a historically black all-women's college in Atlanta.

Patel's story struck members of the committee, with Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, calling it “extraordinary.” But it did not pave an entirely smooth path for Patel during Thursday's confirmation hearing, in which members of the Senate Banking Committee largely focused on Mark Calabria, the Trump's administration's nominee to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

At one point in the hearing, Patel drew raised eyebrows from U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, who asked whether there are any banks that are “too big to fail.” Among the Financial Stability Oversight Council's tasks is determining whether institutions are systemically important, or “too-big-to-fail.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana Senator John Kennedy (R-LA). Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / NLJ

Here's the exchange between Kennedy and Patel:

Kennedy: Do you believe we still have banks that are too big to fail?

Patel: Senator, I believe comparing to pre-crisis levels that financial institutions on the whole are better—

Kennedy: Do you believe that we have banks that are too big to fail?

Patel: I believe in the aggregate that we have greater visibility and resolvability—

Kennedy: Am I missing something here? I'm not connecting with you. Do we still have banks that are too big to fail? Now, you're going to run financial institutions in this country—that's kind of a basic question.

Patel: It is. I think the circumstances surrounding the failure are very fact-dependent.

Kennedy: Well, you're not going to answer the question are you? OK, let me try another one. We did have a financial meltdown in 2008, right?

Patel: We did, yes.

Kennedy: Oh, thank god.

Kennedy: Do you find it embarrassing that many financial institutions that contributed to that meltdown were not held accountable? Not just the institutions—but the people responsible.

Patel: I strongly believe in protecting taxpayers and I hope that we never have to live through another set of events like—

Kennedy: Mr. Patel, I'm not going to vote for you if you don't answer my questions. I don't mean to be rude. But I need answers. We should get you to do your job.

Patel: We should hold accountable those responsible—

Kennedy: And we didn't—did we?

Patel: In some cases we did not.

Kennedy: Right—see that was easy.

Patel: I apologize.

Kennedy: I'm not against big. I'm against dumb. I'm not a big regulation kind of guy. But I'm against not properly regulating our financial markets. The emphasis is properly—and you've got to do that.

Patel: I commit to you, that if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed I will work with you and try to address your concerns.

 

Read Patel's opening statement below:

 

 

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