The Business On... Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General, New York state

Stephen Foley
Thursday 23 December 2010 01:00 GMT
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Governor-elect to you

Of course, and congratulations to Mr Cuomo for his election victory and his impending move to the top job in the state of New York. It all goes to show there is no harm bashing Wall Street.

Bashing? Don't you mean 'holding to account'?

Yes – and thank goodness somebody is doing so, because there has been remarkably little in the way of legal reckoning so far for the folks who contributed to the credit crisis.

What has Mr Cuomo got going on?

Just this week he launched the first fraud charges over the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the central event of the crisis in 2008, accusing the investment bank's auditor, Ernst & Young, of helping Lehman hide tens of billions of dollars in debt from its nervous shareholders.

And...?

Other pending cases include ones against Bank of America and its former boss, Ken Lewis, accused of misleading investors over the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, and against former Obama administration "car tsar" Steven Rattner, accused of bribery in order to win New York state pension fund business for his old hedge fund.

Aggressive guy, Mr Cuomo

Very much in the mould of his father, Mario Cuomo, a bruiser who rose through New York's boisterous political scene to also become governor.

So he's Democratic Party aristocracy, then

He works for it, too, Andrew Cuomo – putting in long hours and working with discipline on his political messages, but yes, he has been groomed from a young age, when he was his father's aide. There was even a marriage to a Kennedy, the royal family of the left, although he and Kerry Kennedy – daughter of assassinated Bobby – were divorced in 2003.

Is being governor the limit of his ambition?

Well, with a few Wall Street scalps in your pocket, the sky is the limit. Watch this space.

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