In line with the firm’s plan of expanding its work on the Dodd-Frank law, Covington & Burling LLP announced the addition of John C. Dugan, former Comptroller of the Currency, to their firm beginning in January 2011. Dugan will be based in the firm’s Washington office and will work as the leader of the financial institutions law group of Covington & Burling, a leading international law firm. Dugan was a former partner at Covington before he accepted the appointment of Ex-President George W. Bush to a five-year term as comptroller in 2005. Dugan has worked with both the Bush and President Barrack Obama’s administrations working with the national banks during the peak of the financial crisis, overseeing the taxpayer-funded bailouts and lobbying during the debate on the Dodd-Frank regulatory law, the most sweeping financial regulation renovation since the 1930s.
Dugan expressed his sentiments over his upcoming post in the firm. “There is a tremendous appetite and demand for individuals with regulatory expertise because of the crisis, Dodd-Frank, [and] changes in capital requirements. The world had kind of moved away from regulation and Washington in a lot of ways, and now regulation is a part of so many different things, for better or worse.”
Once in the firm, Dugan aims to be an adviser on capital requirements, mortgage regulations and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by the recent enactment of the Dodd-Frank law. Since there is a one-year ban on lobbying the Treasury Department and OCCC, Dugan said that he will not yet be lobbying the federal government.
