The National Association of Bond Lawyers has chosen Victoria P. "Penny" Rostow, a former bank lobbyist and Treasury Department official, to become its director of governmental affairs.
Rostow, who recently left Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP as a partner, will join NABL on Jan. 5, the group announced Friday. She will replace Elizabeth Wagner, who left in August to join the Internal Revenue Service as senior counsel to the commissioner of the large and mid-size business division.
"NABL is extremely pleased that we have been able to attract a person of Penny's stature to serve as our director," said president William A. Holby. "She brings an exceptional breadth of intellect, experience, and relationships that will serve our association well."
"NABL anticipates that 2009 will be a year of significant change, some of which will undoubtedly impact the municipal finance industry," added Holby, a partner at King & Spalding LLP in Atlanta. "Penny will be vital in assuring that NABL serves our members and the industry as effectively as possible."
At Sonnenschein Rostow, Rostow served as a consultant in the public law and policy strategies practice and was head of the financial institutions group. Her responsibilities included assisting financial institutions in regulatory, legislative, and political matters.
Before that, from 2002 to 2005, she served as senior vice president and co-head of federal regulatory and government relations at Bank One Corp./JPMorgan Chase & Co., where she oversaw the creation of its government relations office and assumed primary responsibility for federal regulatory and legislative issues related to investment bank and mortgage operations.
Rostow was deputy assistant secretary for banking and domestic finance and legislative affairs at the Treasury from 1995 to 1998 under then-Secretary Robert Rubin. In that post, she directed legislative and regulatory activities relating to e-commerce, deposit insurance funds, the Community Reinvestment Act, Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, and government-sponsored enterprises. She led the department's efforts on a bill that eventually became the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and allowed commercial and investment banks to consolidate.
Before that she was a partner with Powell Goldstein LLP here and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Rostow graduated magna cum laude from Yale College, where she received her bachelor's degree in history, and then received a master's in economics at King's College at Cambridge University. She earned a J.D. degree from Yale Law School, where she served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and was director of the Yale Legislative Services Program.
After law school, she clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
"I am excited to be joining NABL at this critical and historically important time," Rostow said in a statement. "I look forward to working with NABL's members, the industry, and its allies to develop innovative responses to the current market situation and to strengthen public finance and capital market mechanisms."
She could not be reached for further comment.
