Crowell & Moring has added Cristina Diaz, former executive director and general counsel of UBS Bank USA, and most recently head of legal for UBS’s U.S. Remediation Management Office, to the firm’s Financial Services Group as senior counsel in New York. Diaz brings more than two decades of in-house counsel and law firm experience in bank regulation, compliance, and risk management.
At Crowell, Diaz will counsel banks, fintechs, and digital assets companies on a broad range of bank regulatory matters, including charters and licensing, permissible activities, capital requirements, regulatory enforcement, M&A, and corporate governance. She will also counsel clients navigating the intersection of traditional banking and emerging financial services, including digital assets companies seeking to acquire or establish national banks, and banks exploring partnerships with fintechs and digital assets firms.
At UBS, Diaz advised on the firm’s most pressing regulatory matters, including most recently UBS Bank USA’s charter conversion from a Utah industrial bank to an OCC national bank and key compliance remediations. This work gave Diaz extensive experience navigating relationships with state and federal financial regulators. Earlier in her career, Diaz spent eight years at Davis Polk & Wardwell advising U.S. and foreign banks on bank regulatory matters, M&A, and capital markets transactions.
“Cristina is a highly experienced, solution-oriented attorney who brings deep knowledge in the bank regulatory space. She will be an enormous asset to the firm’s growing regulatory and transactional offerings to banks, digital assets businesses, and fintechs,” said Carlton Greene, Co-Chair of Crowell’s Financial Services Group.
“I am delighted to join Crowell & Moring and integrate my bank regulatory experience with the firm’s nationally-recognized digital assets practice. As traditional banking and emerging financial technologies continue to evolve, clients need actionable and sophisticated legal counsel. Crowell offers the collaborative platform to help institutions successfully execute their growth and compliance strategies,” said Diaz.
Diaz received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a member of the New York University Law Review, and received her B.A., summa cum laude, from New York University. She is fluent in Spanish.