Hiring of Tracey McDermott reinforces CEO’s wish to clean up bank, which has faced numerous probes over the years

Standard Chartered announced that Ms. Tracey McDermott, former head of enforcement at the U.K. financial regulator, will join the firm next month as a top adviser to CEO Bill Winters on bank rules and policy. Ms. McDermott will be in charge of public and regulatory affairs, and will join the bank’s management team.

At Standard Chartered she will oversee public affairs, sustainability and communications, teaming up with Mr. Winters and the bank’s new chairman, José Viñals, a former International Monetary Fund official, as well as risk officer Mark Smith. She has a tough mandate, in that Standard Chartered has been probed or penalized in the U.S., Asia and elsewhere for a variety of alleged wrongdoing - [all too frequently for AML violations].

Hiring Ms. McDermott is the latest signal of Mr. Winters’s wish to clean up Standard Chartered and improve its returns since taking over as CEO in June 2015. Standard Chartered was hugely profitable when emerging markets were roaring, then got caught in a clamp when bank capital rules started tightening a few years ago and commodity prices cooled.

MCDERMOTT'S PROFESSIONAL CV.    Ms. McDermott was acting CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority until June, filling the shoes of the former boss, Martin Wheatley, for nearly a year. Her reputation is largely centered around having overseen some of the biggest financial enforcement cases of recent years in Britain, including interest-rate and forex benchmark rigging. She was a contender for FCA CEO until she resigned, and it had been expected that she would resurface at a top bank. Ms. McDermott’s former posts included sitting on the Financial Policy Committee, a powerful board of policy setters at the Bank of England.