Glauber

Photo by Mark Alcarez

As the nation’s financial crisis unfolded in late September, Bob Glauber (DBA ’65) and his wife were exploring the old Silk Road in remote Central Asia. But that didn’t deter intrepid reporters from trying to track him down for comment on Wall Street’s financial meltdown.

Of course the media wanted Glauber’s expert opinion. After all, he played a key role in setting up the Resolution Trust Corporation to handle the S&L bailout in the late 1980s, and he helped formulate regulatory reform of commercial banks in the early 1990s, both as under secretary of the treasury for finance. He served nearly six years as chairman and CEO of the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). And then there are the nearly 25 years he spent teaching finance at HBS. If anyone could give the long view on what was happening on Wall Street, it was Bob Glauber.

A Harvard College economics major, Glauber earned his doctoral degree in business administration at HBS and joined the faculty in 1964. He taught courses on corporate finance and investment management, and served as faculty chair of the Advanced Management Program.

In 1987, President Reagan asked Glauber to serve as executive director of the Brady Commission, a task force created to examine ways to avoid another stock market crash like Black Monday on October 24. “It was hard not to say yes,” he recalls.

After the commission completed its report, Glauber returned to HBS, but Nicholas Brady (MBA ’54), the secretary of the treasury, asked Glauber to serve as under secretary for finance, a post he held for four years.

In 1992, with a newfound interest in public policy, Glauber returned to Harvard as an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School (1992–2000), teaching courses on financial regulation. In 1996, he was invited to serve on the board of the NASD, and in 2001 he became chairman and CEO. Despite his inexperience in running a private-public enterprise, Glauber excelled, and earned high praise upon his 2006 departure from NASD (now FINRA) for “leaving it with an unchallenged reputation for protecting investors and in the strongest financial condition.”

Glauber again returned to Harvard as an adjunct lecturer at the Kennedy School and a visiting professor at the Law School. He also sits on several corporate boards and has recently heard from many friends and colleagues who have tapped him for perspective during the current economic turbulence.

“People talked about a real-estate bubble, but nobody foresaw a collapse in home prices on the scale that has occurred,” with the potential for nearly a 30 percent drop nationally, he says. Pointing to Japan’s economic meltdown in the 1990s, Glauber adds, “They didn’t fix it and had twelve years of stagnation.” To avoid a similar fate, the Treasury’s support of ailing U.S. banks was inevitable, he says.

Now, at 69, Glauber teaches one course a year on regulating capital markets, which he says is plenty to do. The fact that he’s been able to leave Harvard and come back, several times, has been a wonderful benefit, he says. “Being a part of this community is just exhilarating, and I’m very fortunate. That’s really about as good as it gets.”

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