Martin Gruenberg, chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., testifies sooner than the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill on Also can 16, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Photos
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Martin Gruenberg announced Monday that he’s going to resign after a latest probe stumbled on a original culture of sexual harassment and discrimination at the unbiased agency.
“In gentle of latest events, I am prepared to step down from my responsibilities once a successor is confirmed,” Gruenberg said in an announcement. “Till that point, I will continue to fulfill my responsibilities as Chairman of the FDIC, alongside with the transformation of the FDIC’s space of job culture.”
Following Gruenberg’s announcement, Deputy White Condominium Press Secretary Sam Michel said President Joe Biden would “quickly” name his nominee for the space.
“The President will quickly assign forward a brand contemporary nominee for FDIC Chair who’s committed to those values and to preserving patrons and ensuring the soundness of our monetary machine, and we assign a query to the Senate to verify the nominee snappy,” Michel said.
The announcement follows an earlier assertion on Monday from Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, calling on Biden to “straight away nominate a brand contemporary Chair” and said the Senate would possibly perchance additionally peaceable “act on that nomination accurate away.”
There “would possibly perchance additionally peaceable be valuable changes at the FDIC,” Brown, who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, said in a assertion. “Those changes commence up with contemporary leadership, who need to repair the agency’s toxic culture and assign the ladies and males who work there – and their mission – first.”
Along with his assertion, Brown broke from fellow Democrats, who largely condemned the allegations but shunned pushing for Gruenberg’s resignation, as an different calling for him to drive changes at the agency.
Legislation agency Cleary Gottlieb in April released a scathing document detailing an alleged culture of “sexual harassment, discrimination, and diversified interpersonal misconduct” at the FDIC.
The 174-page document, which drew from accounts of better than 500 of us, also integrated, in segment, allegations of Gruenberg’s short temper, accusing him of participating in bullying and verbal abuse. Staff described the FDIC chief as “aggressive” and “harsh,” per the document. In a single instance, Gruenberg allegedly screamed profanities at workers after they delivered contemptible news, the document said.
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), speaks at the 2019 National Action Network National Convention in Unique York, April 5, 2019.
Lucas Jackson | Reuters
“For lots too many workers and for some distance too lengthy, the FDIC has didn’t produce a neighborhood of job safe from sexual harassment, discrimination, and diversified interpersonal misconduct,” the document said.
Investigators said while the agency chief’s alleged behavior is no longer the “root cause” of misconduct at the agency, “we develop acknowledge that, as a chain of FDIC workers assign it in speaking about Chairman Gruenberg, culture ‘starts at the tip.'”
Gruenberg on Also can 15 testified sooner than the Condominium Monetary Products and services Committee, where he apologized for the misconduct at the agency and pledged to place into effect the document’s ideas.
Republicans were rapidly to name for Gruenberg’s removal following the document’s unencumber, while Democrats were restrained in their criticism. Gruenberg, a Democrat, became once nominated by Biden for the space in 2022.
“If President Biden and Democrats were if truth be told extreme about supporting workers and fixing the FDIC’s toxic work culture, they’d query Chairman Gruenberg to step down straight away,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said in an announcement Monday after Gruenberg announced he’d resign. “This design-it-out technique makes it clear that this administration is prioritizing their political agenda over preserving workers.”
If Gruenberg were to circulation away the agency sooner than his successor is confirmed, it can perchance shuffle away the FDIC’s board of directors politically deadlocked with two Democrats and two Republicans, jeopardizing the Biden administration’s monetary reform agenda.
Primarily based mostly on the FDIC bylaws, Vice Chairman Travis Hill, a Republican, would judge the chair’s responsibilities if the space grew to become vacant.
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