The Honorable Eugene A. Ludwig was the 27th Comptroller of the Currency and is a business and civic leader and expert on banking, regulation, risk management, and fiscal policy. He is a sought-after thought leader whose work has been published in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among others, and he is the author of The Vanishing American Dream and The Mismeasurement of America.
He is currently managing partner of Canapi Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on investments in early to growth-stage fintech companies, founder and CEO of Cari Network, the first tokenized deposit network purpose-built to connect chartered banks and decentralized finance, and CEO of Ludwig Advisors, which counsels financial firms on critical matters. He also founded the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, a nonprofit research firm dedicated to improving the economic well-being of middle- and lower-income Americans by developing new economic indicators that offer a more transparent view than traditional metrics into the economic situation of all Americans.
As comptroller of the currency from 1993 to 1998, Gene served as the Clinton administration’s chief banking regulator and point person on the policy response to the credit crunch of the early 1990s. He modernized and revised the bank regulatory framework, leading a multiagency effort to overhaul the Community Reinvestment Act. Under his purview, lending to low- and moderate-income Americans increased tenfold, as did national bank investments in community development corporations. He brought the first fair-lending case in the nation and over the course of his leadership, 27 cases in all, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in fines against violators.
Gene was founder and former CEO and chairman of Promontory Financial Group, a bank consultancy, and Promontory Interfinancial Network (now IntraFi Network), an early fintech company. His distinguished career also includes tenures as vice chairman and senior control officer of Bankers Trust New York Corp., and as a partner at Covington & Burling specializing in banking law.
