[Photo: Bloomberg News]

Donald Trump is expected to nominate Randal Quarles to be Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve – the top banking regulator. Presently a managing director with The Cynosure Group - a private equity firm - Mr. Quarles has previous government experience when he served as a senior Treasury official in the George W. Bush administration.

Randal Quarles, 59, is founder and head of The Cynosure Group, a private investment firm backed by a network of large family offices in the United States – including the Eccles family of Utah. Quarles is married to Hope Eccles.

• Before founding Cynosure, Quarles was a partner of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms.

• From 2001 to 2006, Quarles held several important financial policy posts in the George W. Bush administration, ultimately serving as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance.  

► As Under Secretary, he was the lead advocate for imposing greater regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, arguing that they posed significant risk to the financial sector, and argued for fundamental reform of the entire financial regulatory system - extending broader and more uniform federal regulation to investment banks and insurance companies - because the current system restricted regulators' ability to observe and limit risk in the system.

• Quarles was a partner with Davis Polk law prior to joining the George W. Bush Administration, .

• In prior government service, Quarles was an important member of the team developing the government's response to the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

• Quarles graduated from Columbia University and Yale Law School.  [Source: Wikipedia]

If confirmed by the Senate, Quarles would be the first ever Federal Reserve regulatory chief – a position created by Dodd-Frank. The Fed Vice Chair sits on the central bank’s 7-member Board of Governors, meaning the role gets a vote on U.S. interest rates. It’s believed that Quarles, in that role, might pursue a measured approach to revamping bank rules implemented under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, rather than a wholesale dismantling of them.

While President Barack Obama never nominated anyone to fill that position, Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo served in that function – if not with the title. Mr. Tarullo announced his resignation from the Fed in February 2017.