Expert resume of Thomas Baxter

Law Offices of Thomas C. Baxter, Jr., LLP; former Of Counsel, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP; former General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Mr. Baxter focuses his current practice on advising clients in financial services on select subject matter including governance, payments issues, and regulatory affairs. He also brings extensive experience from counseling clients when at Sullivan & Cromwell, and from his long-term service as the Federal Reserve’s General Counsel. He has special expertise in dealing with central banks from around the world, and with sovereigns and their instrumentalities, as they address sovereign debt and dollar-liquidity issues. Mr. Baxter’s deep knowledge in these areas comes from more than 40 years of work as a lawyer, most in senior roles.

While currently practicing on his own, Mr. Baxter spent more than four years at Sullivan & Cromwell, and before that he was General Counsel and Executive Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. While serving more than 20 years in that senior official position, Mr. Baxter led the New York Fed’s Legal Group. In addition to nearly 50 lawyers providing legal services, the Legal Group performed significant non-legal functions, including the law enforcement unit, the corporate secretary’s office, the compliance and ethics function and the banking applications function. Mr. Baxter also served on the Management Committee, the Federal Reserve Bank’s highest-level executive committee.

In his capacity as General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Mr. Baxter was one of the primary designers of the historic liquidity programs developed by the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis. He was also a leading legal architect of the AIG and Bear Stearns rescues. Prior to that, he spearheaded the Federal Reserve’s on-the-ground efforts following the September 11 terrorist attacks to provide liquidity to financial markets and to assist New York City in its recovery.

Earlier in his career at the Fed, Mr. Baxter served as deputy general counsel for enforcement, where he led the Federal Reserve’s enforcement response to BCCI—the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. BCCI was, and remains, the largest bank fraud in history. Mr. Baxter’s handling of the BCCI case drew praise from then-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who called Mr. Baxter “instrumental” in “initiating” this case, and also in “bringing it to a conclusion.”

Mr. Baxter joined the Federal Reserve in 1980, following a one-year appointment as a law assistant to the justices of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court.