Promontory Financial Group

Promontory Financial Group

Type	Limited Liability Company
Industry	Financial services
Founded	2001
Headquarters	Washington, D.C., United States
Number of locations	15
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Eugene Ludwig, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Services	Management Consulting, Asset Management, Financial regulation
Number of employees	circa 400
Website	www.promontory.com

Promontory Financial Group is a global consulting firm that advises clients on a variety of financial services matters, including regulatory issues, compliance, risk management, liquidity, restructuring, acquisitions, due diligence, internal investigations and cyber security.

Organization

The company was founded by former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency (1993−98) beneath the administration of Bill Clinton Eugene Ludwig and Alfred H. Moses who also works for the most prestigious international law firm Covington & Burling LLP. It is based in Washington, D.C. and has 14 additional offices and affiliates worldwide, in Atlanta, Brussels, Denver, Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Milan, New York City, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Toronto.

Promontory Financial is interdependent with farther-affiliated companies which have similar names:

• Promontory Forensics Solutions, LLC
• Promontory Growth and Innovation
• Promontory Human Capital Solutions
• Promontory Risk Review, LLC

It is a contributor and supporter of the Group of Thirty.

Employees

Approximately 170 of the consultants working for Promontory were former employees of authorities in financial supervision, hence, the enterprise applies as a sort of "shadow regulator" for the Wall Street.

Former chairman of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority Sir Callum McCarthy is non-executive chairman of Promontory Financial Group (U.K.). Former managing director of the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority Michael Foot is global vice chairman. The branch for Europe in Brussels is currently represented by Raffaele Cosimo who worked before for the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Rome. Elizabeth McCaul is partner-in-charge of the firm's New York office.

Former executives include the deceased former Italian Minister of Economy and Finances Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who was chairman of Promontory Financial Group Europe; and previous Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions, U.S. Treasury David Nason and Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin, who were managing directors. The ex-chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Mary Schapiro joined Promontory in April 2013 as managing director and chairman of its governance and markets practice.

Engagements

Because of the high losses within the scope of foreign exchange market business with the Allied Irish Bank Promontory examined the sequences within the bank and came in the "Ludwig Report", published on the 14 March 2002. The trader John Rusnak who was responsible for a large part of the losses and was fired therefore, has not received any active help from within the bank or the outside. The internal control mechanisms and audits have been insufficient, and still could have reduced the extent of the losses with consequent use clearly.

Promontory advised further the government of the United States and from other countries like Cameroon and Iceland. At last the enterprise got publicity, because it was recruited to carry out by order of the Holy See a comprehensive investigation of all customer contacts of the Institute for the Works of Religion (Italian: Istituto per le Opere di Religionecode: it is deprecated – IOR), often also called the Vatican bank, on money laundering guided by Elizabeth McCaul (Chief Executive Officer of Promontory Europe) and Raffaele Cosimo (Chief Operating Officer of Promontory Europe).

For the execution of Foreclosure Reviews from more than 250,000 loan contracts for the Bank of America, PNC Financial Services and Wells Fargo Promontory received $927 million which led to strong criticism and doubt about the independence of the examination. A hearing was arranged by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee to check whether too many duties of the finance supervision were alienated by authorities to private companies.