OCC Enforcement and Compliance Director Brian McCormally To Join Arnold & Porter

Washington, D.C., March 30, 2006 - The international law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP announced today that Brian McCormally, Director of the Enforcement and Compliance Division at the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), is joining the firm's Washington, D.C. office as a partner. Mr. McCormally's experience will build on Arnold & Porter's extensive involvement in the important and burgeoning field of anti-money laundering requirements, compliance counseling and administrative enforcement actions in the financial services industry. He will join a practice group of more than 30 lawyers, including John D. Hawke, Jr., former Comptroller of the Currency, who rejoined the firm in 2004.

"Brian brings extensive government enforcement experience in the financial services area," said Patrick Doyle, head of Arnold & Porter's financial services practice group. "He is an excellent lawyer with a broad array of litigation, transactional, and counseling skills. In the current active regulatory environment, we believe his skills and regulatory insights will be important additions to the resources we offer to financial institution clients in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere."

Commenting on his arrival at Arnold & Porter, Mr. McCormally said, "I'm thrilled to be joining the firm's distinguished financial services group because few firms can match its depth of talent in regulatory law, complex transactions, and litigation. I look forward to assisting the firm's clients with issues in the increasingly complex area of compliance and enforcement."

Mr. McCormally has more than 20 years of experience in senior positions at two federal banking agencies, the OCC and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). He has an extensive knowledge of bank and thrift operations, corporate structures and activities, lending and marketing practices, and corporate governance issues. He has been at the OCC since 1995, first as Assistant Director of Enforcement and for the past five years as the Director of the Enforcement and Compliance Division. Prior to joining the OCC, Mr. McCormally held a variety of legal positions at the OTS and its predecessor, the Federal Home Loan Bank, for 10 years. From 1982 to late 1985, he was in private practice in Kansas City where he represented bank clients on regulatory issues, commercial matters, and litigation. He is a graduate of the University of Kansas Law School.

Arnold & Porter's financial services group represents a broad cross-section of U.S. and international financial services clients, including banks, thrifts, investment managers, insurance companies, securities firms, and electronic commerce businesses. The firm handles transactions of all degrees of complexity and litigates cases involving financial services and industry matters in forums from administrative hearings to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arnold & Porter LLP is an international law firm of approximately 625 attorneys, with offices in Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco, London, and Brussels. The firm, founded in 1946, maintains more than 25 practice areas spanning a broad spectrum of the law. Arnold & Porter provides its clients with a sophisticated understanding of changing environments at the intersection of business, law and public policy -- particularly for clients requiring either U.S. or cross-border regulatory, litigation or transactional services. More information on Arnold & Porter can be found at www.arnoldporter.com.