Ethical Issues for Bank Lawyers

John M. Geiringer Related Seminars and Products

Partner, Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg LLP; Co-Director, Center for National Security and Human Rights Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law

Barack Ferrazzano LLP, Chicago

John is a nationally recognized banking attorney who advises financial institutions on regulatory, governance, and investigative matters. He regularly provides focused training sessions to boards and management on a wide range of legal and risk management topics. Working at the forefront of banking law and regulation, John is a thought leader in the field, primarily through teaching, writing, and frequent media interviews.

As the Regulatory Section Leader of BFKN’s Financial Institutions Group, John advises a wide variety of financial institutions around the country about the full spectrum of legal, regulatory, and supervisory issues that they face. He is a frequent speaker and author in the financial institutions area on issues surrounding banking regulations, examinations, and enforcement actions, as well as on cybersecurity.

John devotes significant time to anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, and related national security issues. In this regard, he lectures and advises institutions around the country, engages with relevant organizations, and has published on the subject.

Prior to joining BFKN in 1999, John worked as a bank regulator and also as a compliance consultant. He served as legal counsel for the Illinois bank regulatory agency, now the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. John also obtained practical experience with respect to bank operations and compliance issues as a regulatory consultant with a regional accounting firm, performing compliance reviews and training for a variety of financial institutions.

John Buchman Related Seminars and Products

Chair Emeriti

The George Washington University Law School - The Business and Finance Advisory Council Chairman

John A. Buchman has been an attorney with Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., San Francisco, CA, since December 2015, most recently as Managing Director, Regulatory Counsel.  At Schwab, John is responsible for the Treasury Legal team, which monitors is responsible for advising Schwab’s Treasury group on all matters relating to capital stress testing, liquidity risk management, Volcker Rule compliance, securities markets transactions, and FDIC insurance assessments.  John also advises the Deposits & Payments groups that oversees the company’s Bank Sweep deposits initiatives and Comptroller’s group responsible for regulatory reporting.

John is currently a Lecturer in Law at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law where he teaches an online Financial Institutions Regulation class.  From 1991 to 2015, John was a member of the adjunct faculty at GW Law School in Washington, DC where he taught banking law and a financial regulatory reform seminar class, and he has also guest lectured at Berkeley Law School. From 2010 to 2015, John served as the first Chair of the Advisory Board of GW Law’s Center for Law, Economics and Finance.  Prior to joining Charles Schwab, from 2013-2015 John was Executive Counsel, Regulatory Affairs with GE Capital in Norwalk, CT, and prior to that was Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary of E*TRADE Bank in Arlington, VA for over 12 years. John is a director and Chair of the Audit Committee of Congressional Bank in Bethesda, MD. He is also a member of the American Bar Association’s Banking Law and Consumer Financial Services Committees and the Exchequer Club. John received his law degree from Harvard Law School and a bachelor’s degree from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Scott Alvarez Related Seminars and Products

Retired General Counsel

Federal Reserve Board

Scott G. Alvarez retired in September, 2017, after having served as an attorney at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for 36 years, including 13 years as the General Counsel to the Board and the Federal Open Market Committee.  As the chief legal officer for the Board. he provided legal and policy advice on a wide range of regulatory, administrative, organizational, legislative and other issues related to the duties and operations of the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Reserve System, and FOMC.  During his tenure at the Board, Scott drafted regulations, legislation, testimony and legal and policy memoranda for the Board of Governors and other senior officers of the Federal Reserve, managed the Legal Division, which is comprised of 95 attorneys and 25 staff, and served as a representative of the Federal Reserve on the Financial Stability Oversight Council.  Scott has testified more than a dozen times before Congress on various issues related to banking regulation and the Federal Reserve and before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the Congressional Oversight Panel regarding the financial crisis of 2007-2009.  He has also provided legal and technical assistance to Congress on various regulatory and legislative matters, including the Dodd-Frank Act, the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, FDICIA, FIRREA, the Federal Reserve Act, the Bank Holding Company Act, and other banking laws.  Recently, Scott is an Adjunct Professor at the Boston University Law School and has been a guest lecturer at the Yale School of Management, Columbia University Law School, New York University Law School, and the UNC Law School.  He was also a contributor to a book on the Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 sponsored by the Brooking Institution and the Yale School of Management.  Scott received his JD from Georgetown University Law Center and an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University.