Jeffrey A. Brown Named Senior Deputy Comptroller, Economics and International; Thomas R. Bloom to Become Senior Deputy Comptroller for Management and CFO

WASHINGTON — Comptroller of the Currency John D. Hawke, Jr. announced today he has named Jeffrey A. Brown to be Senior Deputy Comptroller for International and Economic Affairs and Thomas R. Bloom to be Senior Deputy Comptroller, Office of Management, and Chief Financial Officer.

Mr. Brown is currently Director of the OCC's Risk Analysis Division, which provides technical support for bank examination and policy making by evaluating interest-rate risk, trading activities, the pricing of derivatives contracts, compliance with fair lending laws, and the use of quantitative models to underwrite loans and measure credit risk. He succeeds Jonathan L. Fiechter, who left the OCC in June to join the International Monetary Fund.

"Under Jeff's leadership, the Risk Analysis Division has kept the OCC on top of an industry that is growing increasingly complex and increasingly reliant on sophisticated mathematical models to manage risk," said Mr. Hawke. "We are truly fortunate that he has agreed to accept this new challenge."

Mr. Brown joined the OCC as a financial economist after finishing graduate school in 1987 and has headed the Risk Analysis Division since 1995. He holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Iowa and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Brown University.

Mr. Bloom joins the OCC from the Department of Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), where he has served as Director and Chief Executive Officer since 1999. At DFAS, Mr. Bloom headed an organization with 15,500 employees and a budget of $1.6 billion. The agency processed payroll for 5.9 million people and disbursed funds of more than $416 billion annually.

"A major priority of mine since becoming Comptroller has been to modernize our financial and management systems," said Mr. Hawke. "Tom not only implemented innovative performance and measurement tools at DFAS, he restructured the agency into a customer-focused, strategy-based and metrics-driven organization. Those skills will help ensure that the OCC continues to modernize and improve its financial and management systems."

Prior to joining DFAS, Mr. Bloom served in a variety of senior government and private sector positions. He was CFO for both the U.S. General Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Commerce. He also served as Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Education and worked from 1985 to 1988 as chief accountant and as a professional accounting fellow at the Federal Home Loan Bank System. From 1988 to 1993, he was senior audit partner at Kenneth Leventhal & Company. He received a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Michigan in 1975.

Mr. Bloom will begin work at the OCC on December 15. Mr. Brown starts in his new position immediately.