Derrick D. Cephas, Chair

Derrick D. Cephas is a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, an international law firm headquartered in New York City, and is head of Weil's Financial Institutions Regulatory practice. Mr. Cephas has broadbased experience in representing commercial banks, thrift institutions, bank holding companies and foreign banking corporations in a wide range of regulatory and transactional matters.

Mr. Cephas has been immersed in virtually every important aspect of bank regulation and compliance for the past 30 years, either as a lawyer, a banker or a government official and has significant experience in public policy matters relating to the banking industry. He has testified numerous times before the New York State Legislature, the U.S. Congress, bank regulatory bodies and other similar institutions with respect to regulation of the financial services industry.

From 2006 to 2011 and during the height of the 2008-2009 financial crises, Mr. Cephas served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Amalgamated Bank, then a $4.5 billion commercial bank headquartered in New York City. Before this executive role at Amalgamated, he was for 11 years a banking and corporate law partner in the New York office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft and a longtime member of that firm's Management Committee. Prior to Cadwalader, Mr. Cephas served as the Superintendent of Banks for the State of New York from 1991 to 1994. While Superintendent of Banks, he was nationally recognized for his leadership in several areas of bank regulatory reform, including the creation and implementation of a more rational and hospitable regulatory environment for foreign banks to do business in the United States, the revision of regulations governing the conversion of mutual thrift institutions to stock form and the enactment of interstate branch-banking legislation. Mr. Cephas graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.