Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with executives from several top Wall Street banks and with representatives from a foreign government investment fund last month to discuss the implementation of a new, sweeping financial regulatory reform law.
Information about the meetings was issued Thursday by the Treasury Department as part of its release of appointment calendars for Geithner and other top officials. The department is listing all the meetings held by top officials with outside groups about the financial regulatory law.
Geithner met with representatives of JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank on Nov. 10 to discuss requirements in the new law regarding the level of capital banks are required to hold. He met the same day with officials from one of Singapore's government-run investment funds to discuss those issues and the regulation of derivative investments.
The calendars provided no details about the subjects of the meetings.
The department is considering a vast array of issues as it prepares to implement legislation passed by Congress last summer to overhaul the way the government regulates the financial industry.
That law sets up a new consumer protection bureau, tightens rules regarding the trading of complex securities known as derivatives, and creates a council of regulators tasked with addressing broad-based risks to the financial system.
The calendars show that other senior Treasury officials met with lobbyists for the financial industry, including representatives from the Financial Services Roundtable and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The records list 54 meetings with outside groups in November. Treasury has said it will release the calendars on a monthly basis.
The records also show that Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor tasked with setting up the new consumer protection agency, met with a range of financial companies and nonprofit groups. She also met with Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, the online classified listing service.
Geithner, meanwhile, met with Tony Tan, the executive director of Singapore's Government Investment Corp. while traveling to Seoul, South Korea for an international summit of financial leaders. The two discussed the implementation of rules on the trading of derivatives. The GIC is a sovereign wealth fund that manages over $100 billion.
Geithner came under criticism in 2009 when his appointment calendars, obtained by The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that he had had at least 80 contacts with the top executives of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citigroup in the first seven months of his tenure, giving those three companies extraordinary influence at key moments in the financial crisis.
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