Career moves

Herb Allison, the head of the government's $700 billion financial bailout program, said Wednesday morning that he is leaving the Treasury Department at month's end.

As technical director of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Russell G. Golden is the person to whom financial institutions have been addressing their comment letters on a controversial proposal that would expand the use of 'fair value' accounting. Starting Oct. 1, bankers will be even more interested in seeking Golden's attention.

After months of speculation and more than a week of fevered media coverage on the topic, President Obama formally picked Elizabeth Warren on Friday as assistant to the president and special advisor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in charge of creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

President Obama is expected to appoint Elizabeth Warren as an assistant to the president and special advisor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tasked with getting the new consumer protection bureau on its feet, a Democratic official said late Wednesday.

Senate Democrats largely supported the idea of appointing Elizabeth Warren as the temporary head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with one key exception — Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd — who joined Republicans in arguing such a move would be a "mistake."

The White House is considering appointing Elizabeth Warren as interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, bypassing a likely Senate confirmation battle, according to sources.

Citigroup has hired a pair of executives from Morgan Stanley to run its U.S. consumer and commercial banking division.

Kenneth M. Donohue, Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is leaving the agency in October after more than eight years of service.

President Obama said on Friday that an announcement of a nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is coming "soon."

With the 2010 elections close at hand, Democrats are at risk of losing their No. 2 lawmaker on the House Financial Services Committee.

The head of the Philadelphia Housing Authority — the nation's fourth-largest such agency — took home more than a quarter of a million dollars last year but still had trouble paying his mortgage.

Gregory Baer, a deputy general counsel at Bank of America Corp., is leaving the Charlotte-based firm to join JPMorgan Chase & Co. as managing director and general counsel in the bank's corporate and global regulatory division.

Jason Gillespie, a senior vice president in the warehouse lending division of Southwest Securities FSB, has left the bank, the second senior official in the unit to depart within the past three weeks.

BDO Seidman has brought on Richard Hauer, a commercial property workout professional, to assist the New York consulting firm's bankruptcy and restructuring professionals on all real estate-related issues.

Neil Kornswiet, an executive and attorney with deep roots in the subprime industry, has been hired by Pacific Mercantile Bancorp, Costa Mesa, to manage its residential mortgage division.

Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp., Houston, which recently settled with HUD concerning alleged branch violations, has appointed two state managers to act as compliance auditors for the company.

Title insurance giant First American Financial Corp., Santa Ana, Calif., Friday named Max O. Valdes chief financial officer, and Mark E. Seaton senior vice president of finance.

Specialized Loan Servicing LLC, Littleton, Colo., has hired Oscar Southall as senior vice president of default operations.

The nation's top accounting standard setter is retiring.Robert Herz, the chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, announced that he will step down after eight years. Leslie Seidman, a FASB board member since 2003 and a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. accounting policy vice president, was appointed acting chairman, effective Oct. 1.

Jess Lederman, who a few months ago left Kinecta Federal Credit Union, is now heading up Great Western, a mortgage affiliate of Frontier Bank FSB, Park City, Utah.