Protego Trust Beefs Up Board by Adding Brian Brooks and Michael Carpenter

Protego Trust, one of three crypto firms to receive a provisional bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), has appointed former acting controller of the OCC and current Bitfury CEO Brian Brooks and former Ally Financial CEO Michael Carpenter to its board of directors.

• The two appointments deepen “the board's expertise in digital assets, regulatory compliance and bank operations as the bank nears the conclusion of the conversion process to a federally chartered national bank,” Protego said in a press release.

• The OCC granted Protego Trust a conditional federal charter in 2021 allowing Protego to custody digital assets.

• Brooks is currently the CEO of mining firm Bitfury Group and was previously the head of Binance’s U.S. division for a period of just four months. He served as acting U.S. Comptroller of the Currency from May 2020 until January 2021; before that he was chief legal officer for crypto exchange Coinbase.

• Carpenter previously led digital bank Ally Financial for six years through its initial public offering in 2014. He is currently on the board of CIT Group and CIT Bank N.A., which were recently acquired by First Citizens Bank, creating a bank with more than $100 billion in assets.

• Protego’s five other independent board members include retired Rear Admiral Danelle Barrett; Brian Golob, the former CEO of Russell Capital; Windham Capital Management President and CEO Mark Kritzman; David Straus, founder of Seattle’s Fortune Bank; and Jamie Selway, former head of institutional markets at Blockchain.

• The board is chaired by Colette Taylor, the former CEO and chair of Russell Investment Trust Company.