Banker to discuss fall of Lehman Brothers in Pamplin's BB&T Distinguished Lecture Series on Capitalism
Ally Financial corporate treasurer Christopher A. Halmy will give an insider’s view of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bank of America’s forced takeover of Merrill Lynch’s brokerage business in the BB&T Distinguished Lecture, hosted by the Pamplin College of Business on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 3:30 p.m. at the Inn at Virginia Tech’s Latham Ballroom.
Halmy’s talk is titled “An Insider’s View into the Fall of Lehman and Merrill and the Implications Facing the Financial Sector Today.”
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, triggering a major escalation in the global financial crisis. It remains the single largest bankruptcy in American history.
Halmy oversees Ally Financial’s global treasury activities, including funding and balance sheet management. He previously served as the bank’s structured funding executive, with responsibility for the strategy, planning, and execution of securitizations and structured funding globally. He was also responsible for bank relationships and compliance related to existing transactions in the market.
Before joining the bank in 2009, Halmy worked at Bank of America for a dozen years, most recently as its global funding executive, with responsibility for funding and liquidity activities and mortgage and auto securitization.
He has held treasury, finance, and accounting positions at MBNA America, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, and Deloitte & Touche. He served on the board of directors of Merrill Lynch Bank, USA, and Merrill Lynch FSB.
Halmy received a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s degree in business administration from Villanova University and is a certified public accountant. An adjunct professor at Wesley College from 1999 to 2006, Halmy currently teaches as an adjunct professor at Queens University.
The BB&T Distinguished Lecture Series on Capitalism is part of a Pamplin teaching program to explore the foundations of capitalism and freedom. The program’s courses, undergraduate and graduate, examine alternative economic systems, including socialism and communism, and compare them with the economic solutions offered by free markets. For more information, please contact finance professor and program director Douglas Patterson.
Previous BB&T speakers include retired BB&T chairman and CEO John A. Allison, veteran financial journalist John Berry, Greg Ip of The Economist, Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan, and Pamplin alumnus and Forbes newsletter editor Vahan Janjigian. The program was established in 2007 in the college’s finance department with a $1 million gift from BB&T Charitable Foundation.
The lecture is free and open to the public, no tickets required. Free parking is available at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center located at 901 Prices Fork Rd. in Blacksburg. Find more parking information online, or call 540-231-3200.
