FBI Taps Ex-Lehman IT Exec as CIO

The U.S. government is becoming one of the top employment agencies for CIOs leaving Wall Street firms. On Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported hiring bankrupt Lehman Brother's former IT executive Chad Fulgham, as the Bureau's chief information officer.As CIO, Fulgham is responsible for directing the Bureau's overall IT efforts. This should not be surprising since the U.S. government now owns a hefty chunk of the former investment banking industry including equity stakes in nine national banks, including: Bank of America, Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, not to mention 79 percent of the insurance giant American International Group whose reckless exploits in credit default swaps we've already bailed out to the tune of $150 billion.

The government is smart to hire financial services IT professionals who have expertise in accessing information across international boundaries and had to implement complex compliance and audit systems to deal with regulations such as the Patriot Act and Sarbannes Oxley. "In today's global environment, information technology remains key to how the FBI conducts its business-capturing and sharing information that can be instantly retrieved and shared as we build our investigations," stated FBI Director Robert Mueller, III in the release.

In Fulgham's case, not only is he credited with "transformation of Lehman's technological infrastructure, he was responsible for performing organizational needs, assessments, developing policy and instituting IT strategies, managing budgets, directing products and service selection and overseeing technology operations," according to the release. He will have these same responsibilities at the FBI. (The FBI's former CIO Zal Azmi left to return to private industry).

Mueller also cites Fulgham's work with multinational corporations and cutting edge technology. Prior to his last position, Fulgham worked in many aspects of computer security and information risk management for IBM, JPMorgan Chase and Arthur Andersen.

However, sometimes these Wall Street hires can stir up controversy. A few months ago, Advanced Trading reported that Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio