By Michael Flaherty
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve nominee Allan Landon has up to $40.1 million worth of personal assets, according to government disclosure forms obtained by Reuters, which would make him one of the wealthiest Fed governors if confirmed to the post.
The White House put Landon's name forward earlier this month to fill one of the two empty Fed governor seats, touting the former Bank of Hawaii (N:BOH) chief executive officer's experience in the community banking industry.
Landon's personal wealth is high compared to other Fed governors and well above the previous person on the Fed who represented the community banking industry. That representative was former Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke, whose reported assets in 2012 ranged from $4.4 million to $10 million.
Landon's assets, which include holdings in the Bank of Hawaii and a Fidelity fund, range from $9.7 million to $40.1 million, according to Landon's public financial disclosure filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The agency's financial disclosure reports require a range of asset size and not specific amounts.
That range is just below the disclosed assets of Fed Governor Jerome Powell, who was an investment banker at Dillon Reed and Carlyle Group partner before being appointed to the Fed.
Among Landon's investments are holdings in the Second Curve Opportunity Fund, FTVentures and Chronic Intelligence Inc, a software company based in Utah.
President Barack Obama nominated Landon, 66, on Jan. 6, after months of pressure from politicians and the community banking industry's trade group to fill one of the empty board seats with an industry representative.
Shortly after the nomination, Republican lawmakers attached a provision to a terrorism insurance law mandating that the Fed have a permanent seat reserved for a person with experience working at or supervising a bank with $10 billion or less in assets.
Landon, a partner at Portland, Oregon-based private investment fund Community BanCapital, was chief executive of the Bank of Hawaii from 2004 until 2010.
From 2005-2010, Bank of Hawaii's total assets exceeded $10 billion, according to company filings, though they were just below that threshold when he was the bank's CFO.
"I'm looking at all that stuff now, particularly in relation to ... what extent he would or would not be a real voice for community banks," said Republican Senator David Vitter.
A person familiar with the matter said that, if confirmed, Landon would represent the Cleveland district on the Fed board.