Two former Wall Street bankers and a former Freddie Mac official were named to senior posts at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by White House adviser Elizabeth Warren. 

• Ms. Warren appointed Rajeev Date, her adviser at the Treasury Department and a former Deutsche Bank MD, to head the regulator's research, markets and regulations team.  

• Elizabeth Vale, who was a Morgan Stanley MD and longtime community banker, will serve as assistant director for community banks and credit unions.  Ms. Vale worked for President Obama's senior adviser Valerie Jarrett as the White House business liaison before coming to the Treasury in September to help Ms. Warren set up the agency.

• Former Freddie Mac official Zixta Martinez will manage the agency's ties to consumer groups and community organizations.

• Ms. Warren also named Corey Stone, another former community banker, to head the credit information markets team, and Patricia McCoy, a law professor, to oversee mortgage products.

Not surprisingly, the picks drew praise from the financial industry.   The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a centerpiece of the Dodd-Frank financial services law, will have broad powers to supervise banks and other financial firms. 

Banks had opposed the creation of the bureau and then turned their fire on Ms. Warren, whom they saw as a scourge of Wall Street, adding to the pressure on President Barack Obama not to nominate her to head up the new agency.  Mr. Obama named her in September as a special adviser in charge of setting up the agency.

Ms. Warren has sought to dispel fears that the new regulator will be heavy handed and skewed against the industry. Lately, she has won over some Republican critics, such as Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas, who have praised her for making balanced decisions about the agency.   [WSJournal, 2/18]