Deborah Prutzman is the Chief Executive Officer of the Regulatory Fundamentals Group LLC. She has an exceptionally wide-ranging and deep background in the domestic and international financial services industry, and has hands-on experience in regulatory risk management and corporate governance. She has earned a reputation for helping financial institutions thrive despite difficult business circumstances.
Ms. Prutzman has assembled a team of highly skilled experts with decades of expertise in the financial services regulatory environment. RFG's objective is to bring its clients a level of counsel, creativity, and practical expertise that cuts across complex technical areas in a manner not readily available elsewhere. RFG offers an experienced brain trust that has more than 250 years negotiating financial services issues, particularly in the banking, payment and clearing systems, and asset management spaces.
As General Counsel to the Merrill Lynch Global Bank Group, Ms. Prutzman conceived and managed the reorganization of Merrill's U.S. banking operations to create a full service federal thrift, which enabled Merrill to offer banking services throughout its network of financial advisors. She built and recruited a 60+ person team of legal and compliance professionals. Her team handled regulatory and product issues with a unique focus on "knowledge management" systems designed to assure both quality and consistency of results and business partner understanding of key issues. As part of this process, Ms. Prutzman designed the compliance infrastructure and recruited the compliance team professionals for the ML banks in the United States. In addition, she was able to obtain favorable regulatory rulings in a variety of circumstances, including the handling of "brokered deposits."
Ms. Prutzman has also served as General Counsel of CLS Services, the world's foreign exchange netting system, during its start-up stages. In the absence of precedent, she developed rules and contracts that satisfied the laws and regulations of 13 jurisdictions and allowed 63 of the world’s largest financial institutions to clear foreign exchange transactions on a real-time, continuously linked basis. She recruited and staffed the legal and compliance function.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Prutzman was General Counsel for the New York Clearing House Association, where she developed an expertise in payment system matters and was instrumental in the drafting of Article 4A of the Uniform Commercial Code, the law that governs electronic funds transfer in the United States. Also, Ms. Prutzman served as Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Chemical Bank where her team was responsible for the legal issues associated with the bank's major strategic initiatives, including bank acquisitions and the shaping of legislative initiatives and relations with regulators.
Ms. Prutzman has been a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Arnold & Porter, where she specialized in lending transactions (including securitizations); acquisitions; electronic payments, clearing and settlement; and bank regulatory issues.
She earned her law degree from Columbia University.
Email: dprutzman@regfg.com
