Randal Quarles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Randal K. Quarles

United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance
In office August 8, 2005 – October 13, 2006
President	George W. Bush
Preceded by	Brian Roseboro
Succeeded by	Robert Steel

Born	September 5, 1957 (1957-09-05) (age 50) San Francisco, California
Political party	Republican
Spouse	C. Hope Eccles
Children	3
Alma mater	Columbia University Yale Law School
Profession	Private Equity Investor

Randal Keith Quarles (born September 5, 1957 in San Francisco, California)^[1] is a managing director at The Carlyle Group, ^[2] one of the world’s largest private equity firms.^[3] From August 2001 until October 2006, he held several important financial policy posts in the George W. Bush administration, ultimately serving as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance.^[4]

1 Early Life
2 Early Career
3 George H.W. Bush Administration
4 George W. Bush Administration
5 Carlyle Group
6 References

[edit] Early Life

Quarles was raised in Utah, attending elementary and secondary school there. As a teenager, he was a classical pianist and won a number of prizes, including the Sterling Scholar prize awarded annually to the state's outstanding young musician. Rather than pursue a career in music, however, he chose to study philosophy and entered Columbia University in New York in 1976. Like most young Mormons, he interrupted his college education at Columbia in New York City to serve as a missionary for two years. His mission president was the noted Utah politician Wayne Owens, and Quarles was part of a surprisingly large group of young men trained by Owens who later attained prominence in Utah business, law, and politics. After completing his college education at Columbia, where he graduated with the highest possible honors, he entered Yale Law School, and graduated in 1984.

[edit] Early Career

Upon graduation from Yale, Quarles was hired as an associate at the Wall Street law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. He spent most of his career there in the New York office, but worked in the London office from 1987 to 1989. He specialized in financial institutions law, eventually becoming co-head of the firm's Financial Institutions Group and advising on transactions that included a number of the largest financial sector mergers ever completed. ^[5].

[edit] George H.W. Bush Administration

In 1990, Nicholas Brady, Treasury Secretary under George H. W. Bush, asked Quarles to join a team working to reform the Glass-Steagall Act, the US legislation that separated commercial from investment banking. Quarles served in the first Bush adminsitration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, returning to Davis Polk in January 1993.

[edit] George W. Bush Administration

In 2001, Secretary Paul O'Neill asked Quarles to return to the Treasury, where he served until the mid-term elections in 2006. At the Treasury, Quarles was a senior official under all three of George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretaries and developed policy on an unusually broad range of matters in both domestic and international financial affairs. ^[6]

As Under Secretary, Quarles led the Department’s activities in financial sector and capital markets policy,^[7] including coordination of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, ^[8] development of administration policy on hedge funds and derivatives,^[9] regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,^[10] and proposing fundamental reform of the U.S. financial regulatory structure.^[11]

From April 2002 until August 2005, Quarles was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.^[12] Quarles had a leading role in issues ranging from Chinese currency policy to the Argentine debt default, and from Iraqi and Afghan economic reconstruction to the reform of collective action in sovereign debt agreements.^[13] In addition, Quarles was the policy chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews potential investments that raise national security issues,^[14] and negotiated the historic debt relief agreement for the world's poorest countries reached at the G7 meetings in London in 2005. ^[15]

From August 2001 until April 2002, Quarles was the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund, where he represented the United States in negotiations over the IMF’s response to financial crises in Argentina and Turkey.^[16]

[edit] Carlyle Group

After his departure from the Treasury, Quarles joined the Carlyle Group, the leading private equity firm, to help the firm develop a focus on transactions in the financial services sector. There he works with a group that includes Oliver Sarkozy, the former head of the financial institutions group at UBS and brother of the president of France, and Sandy Warner, the former chairman and CEO of JP Morgan & Co.