FACTBOX-Puerto Rico oversight panel members at a glance

08/31/2016 18:13

Aug 31 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday named six men and one woman to serve as members of the Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board, which will propose a plan for resolving the Caribbean island's debt and economic crisis.

The panel consists of four Republicans and three Democrats. It also includes four members who were born and raised in Puerto Rico. Two have previously headed the island's former fiscal agent, the Puerto Rico Government Development Bank (GDB).

Following are short profiles of the seven board members:

Andrew Biggs (Republican)

Biggs, who served in the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on retirement issues.

Biggs has written extensively about Social Security and the weak state of public and private pension systems. He has also argued that government employees are overpaid.

Many of his papers between 2009 and 2012 were co-authored with Jason Richwine, a former Heritage Foundation think tank analyst who resigned after allegations of racism, including revelations that he had written for a self-described "nationalist" website and that he had opposed letting in immigrants with low IQs.

Puerto Rico's vast public employee retirement system is underfunded, and its future is likely to be a significant focus of the board and a possible source of tension among members.

Biggs held various positions in the Bush administration, most of them in the Social Security Administration, including principal deputy commissioner from 2007 to 2008. Before joining the Bush administration, he worked as a Social Security analyst at the Cato Institute think tank from 1999 to 2003.

Jose Carrión III (Republican)

Carrión, one of four native Puerto Ricans on the panel, is an insurance industry executive and past chairman of Puerto Rico's Workers Compensation Board.

Carrión is president and principal partner for HUB International CLC LLC, the No. 2 insurance broker in Puerto Rico and a unit of HUB International. Carrión co-founded the insurance brokerage Carrión, Laffitte & Casellas, Inc in 2001 and was its president until 2012, when it was sold to HUB.

In addition to his work with the workers compensation board, which he chaired from 2009 to 2012, he also served on the board of the island's public auto insurer.

Carlos Garcia (Republican)

Garcia, a veteran commercial and investment banker who once headed the GDB, is chief executive of BayBoston, a minority-owned private equity firm focused on investments in community banks and financial services firms.

One of BayBoston's portfolio companies is Caribbean Financial Group Holdings, based in Puerto Rico and Florida, which provides unsecured loans to low- and moderate-income consumers. Garcia also had previously served as chairman of CFG.

Garcia, born and raised in Puerto Rico, served as president of the GDB from 2009 to 2011 under former Governor Luis Fortuno, who fired thousands of government workers to try to close the government's massive budget deficit.

David Skeel (Republican)

Skeel, a bankruptcy lawyer and debt restructuring expert, has been a business law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for 17 years. He has recently argued that allowing Puerto Rico to pursue a bankruptcy-like debt restructuring could resolve a number of the problems afflicting the island.

Prior to his position at Penn, Skeel taught at Temple University from 1990 to 1998. He worked as an associate in the reorganization and finance department at the law firm Duane, Morris, and Heckscher (now Duane Morris) from 1988 to 1990.

Arthur Gonzalez (Democrat)

Gonzalez, a retired U.S. bankruptcy judge, has handled some of the largest corporate bankruptcy cases ever.

In his term with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Gonzalez presided over the reorganizations of Enron, WorldCom and Chrysler.

In the early 2000s, Gonzalez dealt with workouts for Enron and WorldCom, the biggest Chapter 11 case until Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.

Starting in 2009, he oversaw the bankruptcy of Chrysler, the No. 3 U.S. automaker. Chrysler's bankruptcy was notable for what some analysts see as the favorable treatment of its unionized workforce relative to bondholders, a dynamic that could also loom large for Puerto Rico, which owes $70 billion to bondholders but also faces a $45 billion pension shortfall.

He retired in 2012 from his position as chief judge and became a senior fellow at New York University School of Law.

Jose Ramon Gonzalez (Democrat)

Ramon Gonzalez, president and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, is a veteran banker with deep ties to Puerto Rico's financial services sector, including the GDB.

Ramon Gonzalez, who was born and grew up in the commonwealth's capital, San Juan, served as president and chief executive officer of the GDB from 1986 to 1989.

He also served as president and CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston's Puerto Rico operations and held top positions with Santander BanCorp and OFG Bancorp.

Ramon Gonzalez is also a past president of the Puerto Rico Bankers Association and the Securities Industry Association of Puerto Rico.

Ana Matosantos (Democrat)

Matosantos is an experienced public finance official, serving as the head of the California Department of Finance under Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and Jerry Brown, a Democrat.

In that role, Matosantos was the chief fiscal adviser to Brown as the state closed a $200 million-a-year budget gap. She also worked in the state's health agency and the California Senate.

Matosantos, who grew up in San Juan, is now president of Matosantos Consulting. (Compiled by Stephanie Kelly and Nick Brown; Edited by Dan Burns and Jonathan Oatis)

08/31/2016 18:13