Navigating Legal Risks in Central Banking: Enhancing Governance and Compliance

Eamonn is Director of Ardhill Advisory LTD, an independent consulting firm focused on advising financial institutions, central banks, national authorities and international organisations, including the International Monetary Fund, on financial stability policy. This includes advising on prudential regulation, bank resolution, central bank liquidity and crisis management.

Between 2020 and 2022, Eamonn was a senior advisor to the Bank of England (BoE), leading a resolution planning team for a large UK bank as part of the BoE's Resolvability Assessment Framework, contributing to UK resolution policy development and cross-border cooperation with international authorities on resolution issues.

From 2016 and 2019, Eamonn was Head of the Resolution Office at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). During this time, he was responsible for leading the development of the domestic statutory/regulatory resolution regime for all Hong Kong banks, leading resolution planning for banks in Hong Kong, often in close cooperation with foreign authorities, and contributing to the international cross-border resolution policy framework and resolution plans for global banks through his work as a member of the Financial Stability Board committees and for the cooperative organization of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks (EMEAP).

Before joining the HKMA, Eamonn worked on financial stability topics, including bank resolution at the Bank of England for 4 years. He was also a senior policy advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer at HM Treasury (HMT) for 7 years. At HMT he worked at the centre of the UK’s policy and strategic response to the financial crisis, both managing bank failure and the policy response to the Too-Big-To-Fail problem.

In his early career, Eamonn was a diplomat in Washington DC, covering EU foreign policy and trade issues.

Mr. Alessandro Gullo is Assistant general counsel at the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund, where he is leading the team of the Fund’s lawyers working on monetary, financial and fiscal law in IMF’s member countries. A national of Italy, he has advised a wide range of countries across the globe on the design and implementation of their fiscal and financial legal frameworks, also in the context of the IMF’s financial assistance. In his current capacity, he is contributing to the IMF’s digitalization agenda through analytical papers on the different forms of private and public digital money, and country advice on legal reforms in this area. He served in various committees of international organizations contributing to international standards, particularly in the financial sector area. Mr. Gullo published on banking and fiscal law matters, including most recently on the legal reforms adopted by countries in response to the pandemic. Before joining the IMF in 2008, he worked for international law firms, in Europe and in the United States.

Thomas J. Curry is a recently retired partner in Nutter McClennan & Fish’s Corporate and Transactions Department and was a co-leader of the firm’s Banking and Financial Services group. He was a regulatory attorney who advised clients on a wide range of policy, financial services regulation, governance, and other issues.

Tom serves on the board of directors of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston (FHLBB) and serves on The Brookings Institution's Center for Regulation and Markets Policy Advisory Council. He also chairs the Milken Institute’s Fintech Advisory Council and is a foundation board member of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation (AIR), which helps regulators integrate technology into financial supervision and regulation.

Prior to joining Nutter, Tom served as the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency until May 2017. He also served as an expert consultant for the International Monetary Fund in 2017-2018 and 2021-2022. 

In 2012, Tom was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as Comptroller of the Currency – the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the federal agency that charters, regulates, and supervises national banks and federal savings banks. As Comptroller, he launched the OCC’s Responsible Innovation Initiative, proposed the Fintech national bank charter, and established the OCC Office of Innovation, a first among federal financial regulators. In this role, Tom served as an ex-officio member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Financial Stability Oversight Council. He was also a member of the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS), the oversight body of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Tom also served as Chairman of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) for a two-year term from April 2013 until April 2015.

Before becoming Comptroller in 2012, Tom served as a member of the Board of Directors of the FDIC. He was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2003. He continued to serve on the FDIC Board until May 2017. Tom was a FDIC Board member during the Global Financial Crisis and the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 and participated in the adoption and implementation of its post-crisis reform regulations as well as the United States’ adoption of the Basel 3 capital reforms.

Prior to joining the FDIC’s Board of Directors, Tom served five Massachusetts Governors as the Commonwealth’s Commissioner of Banks from 1995 to 2003 and from 1990 to 1991. He was appointed by Governor William F. Weld, a Republican, in 1995 and by Governor Michael S. Dukakis, a Democrat, in 1990.

Tom served as the Chairman of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors from 2000 to 2001 and served two terms on the State Liaison Committee of the FFIEC, including a term as Committee chairperson.

Previously, Tom served as Acting Commissioner of Banks from February 1994 to June 1995. He previously served as First Deputy Commissioner and Assistant General Counsel within the Massachusetts Division of Banks. Tom entered state government in 1982 as an attorney with the Massachusetts’ Secretary of State’s Office.

Tom was a longtime member of the NeighborWorks America Board of Directors (NWA). He twice served as Chairman of the Board of Directors, most recently from March 2014 through June 2016. NWA is a Congressionally chartered non-profit whose mission is to support affordable and sustainable housing and community development.

Patrick Macfarlane is an in-house legal counsel at the Bank of England, with a focus on advising on the Bank’s market operations and its functions as a settlement agent and payment system operator. Prior to joining the Bank, Patrick worked as a financial regulation associate at law firms in London and Belfast.

Will Oates is an in-house legal counsel at the Bank of England where he advises on a range of Bank activities including its corporate, commercial, markets and payments operations.  Prior to joining the Bank, Will trained and qualified at a large corporate law firm before moving in-house to FTSE 100 asset manager.

Diarmuid has spent a considerable part of his career working on and writing about financial resilience and the operational aspects of central banking, and he has worked across the globe with many central banks and national supervisory and resolution authorities.  

Diarmuid began his central banking career at the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) and was part of the team that played a key role in the CBI’s response to the Irish financial crisis. Diarmuid has also worked in the market operations area of the European Central bank and spent several years at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in both the central banking and crisis management areas, where he participated in the IMF’s technical assistance and Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) work. Having returned to the CBI in 2018, Diarmuid took over responsibility for Brexit and fintech related banking/payment institution/e-money authorisations and banking contingency planning, establishing a new unit. In 2020, Diarmuid undertook a fellowship program with the Financial Stability Institute at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel focusing on crisis management issues.

In late 2021 Diarmuid commenced a secondment to the EU Commission, where he is now part of the Commission’s team responsible for implementing its published Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy where his focus continues to be on financial resilience issues.

Diarmuid also co-leads the development and delivery of a dedicated comparative central banking module as part of a new online Global Central Banking and Financial Regulation master’s degree course with Warwick Business School (and in partnership with the Bank of England).

Mr Marques is currently a Senior Financial Sector Expert at the IMF. He was previously Head of Division at the Resolution Department of the Bank of Portugal, responsible for legal, policy and regulatory affairs related with banking resolution and deposit insurance. Before that, between 2004 and 2013, he worked as a legal counsel in the Baking Supervision Department of the Bank of Portugal, mainly advising on regulation and policy issues related with capital requirements, internal governance, licensing and crisis management. He is a Law Graduate from Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Mr Marques has been an active participant in the European discussions on banking resolution and crisis management since 2009. He represented Portugal as an expert in the negotiations of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive and the Single Resolution Mechanism Regulation in the Council of the European Union. He also participated actively in the European Banking Authority’s work on recovery and resolution issues, and chaired several working groups. During the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union he co-chaired the Council Ad-Hoc Working Party on the Establishment of a European Deposit Insurance Scheme.

Finally, Mr Marques has extensive practical experience in the resolution of systemic banks in Portugal. In 2014 he was a senior manager in the resolution process of one of the largest banks in Portugal (Banco Espírito Santo, SA) and in 2015 he chaired the task force at the Bank of Portugal responsible for the resolution of BANIF – Banco Internacional do Funchal, SA.

Ingrid (Wuerth) Brunk (@WuerthIngrid) holds the Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law at Vanderbilt Law School where she also directs the Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program. From 2012-2018 she served as Co-Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law. Professor Brunk has served on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law and on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. She has received numerous honors and fellowships, including many teaching awards, the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fulbright Senior Scholar award, the German Chancellor’s Fellowship, and election to the German Society of International Law, to the Order of the Coif at the University of Chicago Law School, and to the American Law Institute. She has written extensively on transnational litigation, foreign relations law, and public international law. 

Dr. Katarzyna Parchimowicz is Assistant Professor at the Academic Excellence Hub – Digital Justice Center (University of Wroclaw), Associate Researcher at the European Banking Institute and Research Associate at the Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics. She holds a PhD in law from University of Wrocław and master’s in law and finance from Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research focuses on international and EU financial regulation, especially the regulation of global systemically important banks and new technologies in financial system. She is the author of The Regulation of Megabanks. Legal Frameworks of the USA and EU (Routledge, 2023) and awardee of ECB Legal Research Programme 2022.