Williams & Jensen to Lobby for HSBC on Bank Regulation

The North American arm of one of Europe's largest banks has retained Williams & Jensen to lobby for it in Washington.

HSBC North America Holdings Inc., the holding company for the U.S. operations of London-based HSBC Holdings PLC, has enlisted the law firm to advocate for it on bank regulation matters that include "structure, prudential regulation, and resolution," according to lobbying registration paperwork filed with Congress on Friday.

Williams & Jensen chairman and chief executive officer J. Steven Hart and principal Joel Oswald, who specialize in regulatory issues, are handling the account. Neither Hart nor Oswald was immediately available for comment.

The registration came six months after the U.S. Justice Department announced that it netted $1.3 billion from a forfeiture agreement with HSBC. In December, Lanny Breuer, who led the Justice Department Criminal Division at the time, said DOJ was holding the bank responsible for "stunning failures of oversight" that allowed Mexican drug traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the bank's subsidiaries.

HSBC spent $1.1 million on federal lobbying during the first quarter of this year, according to congressional records. For its advocacy efforts, the bank used its own staffers, as well as lobbyists from Washington Council Ernst & Young, The Smith-Free Group and The Washington Tax Group.

The bank lobbied on several matters, including foreign accounts tax compliance, tax reform and legislation that would protect derivatives trades from regulation.

Comments

[J]

Interesting, and most in the public will never know of these efforts.