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The Office of Thrift Supervision's (OTS) unprecedented enforcement action against Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays and Handler (Kaye Scholer) prompted howls of protest from the legal community. OTS, it was claimed, was using its excessive power to redefine the role of the lawyer. This Comment confirms that OTS sought to impose duties on Kaye Scholer that conflict with professional ethics rules. The Comment then goes on to suggest that the conflict over professional responsibility in the Kaye Scholer case reflects, more fundamentally, a conflict over the role of the citizen, and the citizen's relationship with the state. Our adversarial system of dispute resolution is founded on our democratic assumption of citizen autonomy. Citizens are presumed to have independent interests and goals that the state must take into account when it regulates their activities. By contrast, OTS views the thrifts it regulates not as autonomous citizens but as instrumental means of achieving OTS goals. This Comment contends that it is this divergence in the concept of the citizen that gave rise in the Kaye Scholer case to the conflict regarding the appropriate role of the lawyer. The Comment concludes by exploring some normative questions raised by the OTS regulatory scheme.

Professor Lawrence G. Baxter is correct in his argument that statutory authority, rather than the broad fiduciary duty claimed by the agency, is the source of the enforcement authority of the US Office of Thrift Supervision. Imposition of the fiduciary duty violates Congressional intent in enacting the statute, section 8 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. Therefore, attorneys representing insured depository institutions should be held only to traditional standards of professional conduct.

The US Office of Thrift Supervision's recent claim that broad fiduciary duties are owed to the government by federally insured depository institutions and associated third parties is unnecessary as well as erroneous. The duty to refrain from 'unsafe and unsound' practices, a statutory duty created by the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, provides sufficient authority for the agency's enforcement powers. Furthermore, the statutory duty provides a much clearer standard than does the general fiduciary duty proposed by the agency.

Every taxpayer is familiar with the savings and loan crisis, the collapse of the national thrift system, and the. government's 'bailout' that is of a magnitude that defies historical precedent. [...]

Byline: Robert Barba The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has replaced an order between North American Savings Bank and the Office of Thrift Supervision with one of its [...]

Byline: Kate Davidson Shares of Clifton Savings Bancorp Inc. in New Jersey tumbled a day after it said its regulator would not approve its second-step conversion. The $1.1 billion-asset company [...]

Byline: Robert Barba A prompt corrective action directive is often a sign of grim times, but for AnchorBank in Madison, Wis., the order is serving as a guide as it [...]

Guaranty Bank in Milwaukee is under pressure to boost capital. The Office of Thrift Supervision imposed a cease-and-desist order last week requiring the company, which has $1.6 billion of assets, [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision is using the availability of federal capital programs as a bargaining chip to strengthen its oversight of holding companies. The regulator has been asking companies [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision approved applications late Friday for Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and Lincoln National Corp. to become thrift holding companies and take over two deeply troubled [...]

WASHINGTON -In a matter of hours Friday, four large insurance companies announced marriages with troubled thrift companies, and the Office of Thrift Supervision played the role of matchmaker, according to [...]

H&R Block Co. said the Office of Thrift Supervision had lifted a 3% capital requirement imposed on the holding company, giving it more freedom to buy back shares, allocate capital, [...]

WASHINGTON -- The Office of Thrift Supervision inadequately responded to danger signs at NetBank Inc. before the $2.5 billion-asset thrift failed in late September, according to a report issued by [...]

Beneficial Mutual Bancorp Inc. in Philadelphia said Tuesday that it has asked the Office of Thrift Supervision for permission to buy back up to 5% of its stock. The $3.5 [...]

WASHINGTON -- The Office of Thrift Supervision announced Friday that it had closed NetBank and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as the receiver for the $2.5 billion-asset Alpharetta, Ga., [...]

Office of Thrift Supervision Director John Reich announced that his agency would expand its work with minority-owned thrifts through a series of meetings and a survey. During a conference on [...]

Countrywide Financial Corp. has received approval from the Office of Thrift Supervision to convert to its national bank subsidiary, Countrywide Bank NA, to a federal thrift. The OTS announced late [...]

WASHINGTON -- A community group is questioning Countrywide Financial Corp.'s plan to convert to a thrift and whether the Office of Thrift Supervision could effectively scrutinize the lender's exotic loan [...]

A recent seminar at the American Enterprise Institute, 'Credit Unions in the Broader Financial System,' illuminated a basic misunderstanding about credit union capital, or net worth. Credit union net worth [...]

Popular Inc. has learned the hard -- and painfully public -- way that not all regulators are created equal, particularly when the subject is subprime lending. The San Juan, Puerto [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision announced Monday that it has updated its interest rate risk model and plans to continue making changes for a few years. The OTS said its [...]

R&G Financial Corp. said its Florida thrift, R-G Crown Bank, has entered a cease-and-desist order with the Office of Thrift Supervision. The San Juan, Puerto Rico, holding company said late [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision has terminated its supervisory agreement with Washington Savings Bank of Bowie, Md. The $444 million-asset thrift entered the agreement in March 2004, after the OTS [...]

Marcy Federal Credit Union in Marcy, N.Y., has applied to the Office of Thrift Supervision for a mutual savings bank charter, becoming the third credit union to do so in [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision has become the first federal regulator to preempt state laws covering gift cards. OTS-regulated thrifts may ignore state laws regarding gift card disclosures, licenses, fee [...]

WASHINGTON -- Sunday's big merger announcement raised a perennial public policy question: Are there enough thrifts to justify a separate federal regulatory agency? The number the Office of Thrift Supervision [...]

The retirement of Alan Greenspan marks the end of a golden era in which the Fed has enjoyed remarkable stability and enviable stature under the leadership of two of its [...]

After meeting with executives of 20 Gulf Coast thrifts last week, Office of Thrift Supervision Director John Reich predicted 'fallout' -- in the form of failures or mergers -- within [...]

A bill the Montgomery County Council in Maryland passed last week tries to circumvent federal and state preemption by treating predatory lending as discrimination. The bill, which County Executive Douglas [...]

WASHINGTON -- Banks and thrifts have to tell their regulator about any breach of security for sensitive customer information but will have more leeway in deciding when to notify customers, [...]

Not Happy Many attendees at the National Community Reinvestment Corp. annual conference spent a lot of time last week bashing the Office of Thrift Supervision for its recent changes to [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision published an interim rule Wednesday that would streamline its procedures for determining whether a company qualifies as a savings and loan holding company. The rule, [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision said a mutual fund company that makes significant investments in savings associations may do so without filing applications that typically accompany those investments. In an [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision, which broke ranks with other regulators four months ago by proposing simplified community reinvestment requirements for more small thrifts, continued pushing the envelope Friday. The [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision has extended preemption of state licensing and registration requirements to companies marketing on behalf of federal savings associations. The Oct. 25 legal opinion says states [...]

AnchorBank in Madison, Wis., has signed a cease-and-desist order with the Office of Thrift Supervision concerning its compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act. The order, announced Friday by the $3.8 [...]

This year is shaping up as the busiest ever for conversions by privately held thrifts to mutual holding companies. Already eight mutual thrifts have become mutual holding companies, and as [...]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Office of Thrift Supervision can subject state-chartered thrifts and mortgage lenders to state limits on prepayment [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision cracked down this week on the subprime servicing operation of Ocwen Federal Bank in Fort Lee, N.J., in what some say is a harbinger of [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision said Monday that it will use a new method for calculating interest rate exposure. The change, which the agency has revised since its initial proposal [...]

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday ruled against a mortgage lender trade group that was trying to stop the Office of Thrift Supervision from subjecting [...]

D. Russell Taylor, the mutual thrift executive who on Wednesday is to become the 11th chairman of America's Community Bankers, says he is determined to defend the status quo on [...]

Federally chartered thrifts will be the first financial companies to have their privacy protection efforts reviewed, but the Office of Thrift Supervision said it would use a light hand in [...]

Blue Ash thrift focusing on mortgages, deposits First Franklin Corp., parent company of the Tri-State's fifth-largest savings and loan, says it is making progress toward reducing its interest-rate risk. The [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision approved a three-step transaction Tuesday that lets Harris Savings Bank of Harrisburg, Pa., and York Federal Savings and Loan Association form a new thrift with [...]

The Office of Thrift Supervision on Friday approved SEI Investments Co.'s application to organize a trust-only federal savings bank. The asset management company will operate SEI Federal Trust Co. out [...]

Richard M. Riccobono is tired of listening to the rumors about the federal thrift charter: that it has lost its luster, that it will be merged into the national bank [...]