Accountant Named to Head FHLB's Finance Unit

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has named H. Ronald Weissman chairman of the Federal Home Loan Banks' Office of Finance. Mr. Weissman has been a senior partner in Ernst & Young's Financial Services Office since 2002 and also worked at Arthur Andersen. Ed DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said Mr. Weissman's accounting background "will be critical to overseeing the important role of the Office of Finance in preparing the quarterly and annual combined financial report of the FHLBanks." The Office of Finance issues the debt of the 12 Home Loan banks and publishes a combined financial report for the system. Mr. Weissman succeeds Charles Bowsher, who resigned in March 2009 after refusing to approve the system's first-quarter combined reports. He ordered an independent study to explore options for making the system's accounting more transparent. That report came out earlier this month and called for greater centralization in the system's reporting, a move the Home Loan Banks are resisting.