A six-year board member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Martin J. Gruenberg was nominated to be chairman of the FDIC by President Barack Obama in June 2011. He will function as acting chairman until his confirmation hearing in the Senate.

 

Gruenberg attended college at Princeton, where he earned his undergraduate degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He went on to law school at Case Western Reserve, where he earned his JD.

 

Before becoming a member of the FDIC board, Gruenberg spent 18 years on Capitol Hill as a House and Senate staffer. In 1987, he joined the banking committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy, serving until 1992. Major legislation that Gruenberg worked on included the Financial Institution Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991.

 

In 1993, he moved to the Senate, becoming senior counsel to Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-Maryland) on the staff of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Gruenberg advised Sarbanes on issues of domestic and international financial regulation, monetary policy and trade.

 

He played an active role in crafting the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed after the Enron, Tyco and WorldCom scandals, which mandated major disclosure reforms for U.S. public companies.   

 

Gruenberg was appointed to the FDIC board in 2005 and was made vice chairman. After Chairman Donald Powell resigned, Gruenberg served as acting chairman from November 15, 2005, to June 26, 2006.

 

He was seen as a supporter of controversial Republican Sheila C. Bair, whom he succeeds, in her aggressive stance toward the banking industry during the financial crisis. 

 

Outside of his service on the board, Gruenberg was named chairman of the Executive Council and president of the International Association of Deposit Insurers in November 2007.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Biography (Corporate Governance Center)

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Soxlaw)

Martin J. Gruenberg (New York Times)

At FDIC, Gruenberg Takes Helm from Bair (Marlene Y. Satter, AdvisorOne)