AIAC BIDS FAREWELL TO BILL ISAAC, FORMER FDIC CHAIRMAN
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK, NY — June 26, 2026 — William M. Isaac, the fourteenth Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the man who led the federal response to the banking and savings and loan crises of the 1980s, died on June 19, 2026, at his home in Sarasota, Florida, from complications of Lewy body dementia. He was 82. A service was held Friday, June 26 at 12pm at United First Methodist Church of Sarasota, Florida with a reception which followed at the following at The Field Club.
Born in Bryan, Ohio, on December 21, 1943, to Charles and Ruth Isaac, he took a Bachelor of Business Administration at Miami University in 1966 and a Juris Doctor, summa cum laude, at the Moritz College of Law of The Ohio State University in 1969. He practiced at Foley & Lardner in Milwaukee, working at the leading edge of the expansion of bank holding companies and through the real estate collapse of 1972–74, then moved in 1974 to Louisville as Vice President and General Counsel of First Kentucky National Corporation, the largest banking company in the state.
President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the FDIC Board of Directors on March 16, 1978, at the age of 34, making him the youngest member in the agency's history. The job began at full speed: on his first day in office he was sent to Puerto Rico, where Banco Crédito, one of the territory's largest banks, was about to fail. President Ronald Reagan named him Chairman in 1981, when he was 36 — the youngest ever to lead the agency. He served from August 3, 1981 to October 21, 1985, succeeding Irvine H. Sprague and preceding L. William Seidman.
His tenure coincided with the most unstable period in American banking since the Depression. The prime rate reached 21.5 percent, unemployment touched 11 percent, the thrift industry fell into mass insolvency, and crises arrived in sequence from agriculture, energy, real estate, and developing-country debt. In 1984 he engineered the rescue of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust, then the seventh-largest bank in the United States and the largest failure in American history to that point. Across the crises of the 1980s and early 1990s some 3,000 banks and thrifts failed, including nine of the ten largest banks in Texas. Both President Reagan and Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker credited him with helping hold the financial system steady. At the FDIC he also served on the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee, chaired the Financial Institutions Examination Council, and sat on the Vice President's Task Force on Regulation of Financial Services.
After leaving government he founded The Secura Group in 1986, advising financial institutions, law firms, and governments on regulation, risk, and strategy. The firm was acquired by LECG in 2007 and later became part of FTI Consulting, where he served as Senior Managing Director until the end of 2019. He was elected Chairman of the Board of Fifth Third Bancorp in 2010 and served until 2014, and joined the board of Total System Services (TSYS) in 2014. On leaving FTI he partnered with the New York banker and philanthropist Howard Milstein as Co-Chairman of The Isaac-Milstein Group, and served as Chairman of Sarasota Private Trust and Cleveland Private Trust and as a director of New York Private Bank & Trust and Emigrant Bank. He announced his retirement shortly before his death.
For four decades he was among the most widely read commentators on bank supervision, writing in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Forbes, and American Banker, appearing regularly on CNBC, and testifying before Congress. His book Senseless Panic: How Washington Failed America, with a foreword by Paul Volcker, was published by Wiley in 2010 and argued that the hard lessons of the 1980s had been forgotten by 2008.
Mr. Isaac served for three years as Senior Advisor to American Industrial Acquisition Corporation, consulting on a wide range of complex financial and legal matters, including acquisitions, restructurings, refinancings, and commercial and financial dispute resolution.
STATEMENT OF AIAC CHAIRMAN L. M. LEVIE
L. M. Levie, Chairman of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation, issued the following statement:
“Bill Isaac was thirty-four years old when his government gave him a seat at the FDIC. He was thirty-six when it gave him the whole agency. Most men that age are still learning the shape of the work. Bill was already steadying a banking system under the heaviest strain it had borne since the Depression. He never traded on the reputatiopn it earned him.”
“A crisis rewards a particular kind of man. Not the loudest. Not the quickest to a microphone. It rewards the one who has read the statute, counted the cost, and settled in advance on what he will not do. Bill was that man. Three thousand banks and thrifts failed on his watch. The system did not.”
“He was my dear friend, my advisor, and my mentor. I valued his rock solid courage, moral clarity and judgment above anyone I have ever known. He could not be deceived nor intimidated, although lesser men tried. I vastly valued his humor and intellect. I fondly recall Bill joining us at AIAC sponsored receptions, lunches and dinners at the Metropolitan Club where he vigorously debated fiscal and monetary policy with my dear friends and colleagues.
He told his war stories — of his years as FDIC Chairman working side by side with Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker, his role as Chairman of Fifth Third Bank, of his decades counseling financial titans such as Carl Lindner, Edmond Safra, and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud — all without a trace of vanity. A man secure in what he has done feels no need to embellish it.”
“Some men leave public office and spend the remainder of their lives explaining what they would have done. Bill spent his explaining what he had done, and why. He wrote it down. He testified. He took the call at any hour. He wanted the next man in the chair to inherit the lesson rather than relearn it.”
“We have lost a giant in his field. It is no exaggeration to say that Bill Isaac helped save the American banking system from complete meltdown. Bill was a national treasure. On behalf of American Industrial Acquisition Corporation and our affiliated companies, I extend our deepest condolences to Christine and to the entire Isaac family.”
AN ELEGY FOR WILLIAM M. ISAAC
A funeral service was held for Mr. Isaac at First United Methodist Church in Sarasota, Florida, at noon on Friday, June 26, 2026, followed by a reception at The Field Club of Sarasota. Mr. Levie composed the following poetic tribute:
ABOUT WILLIAM M. ISAAC
William M. Isaac (December 21, 1943 – June 19, 2026) served as the fourteenth Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from 1981 to 1985, having joined its Board of Directors in 1978 as the youngest member in the agency's history. He led the agency through the banking and thrift crises of the 1980s, including the rescue of Continental Illinois, and was among the principal architects of the resolution practices that American bank regulators still use.
He founded The Secura Group in 1986, chaired Fifth Third Bancorp from 2010 to 2014, and served as Co-Chairman of The Isaac-Milstein Group and Chairman of Sarasota Private Trust and Cleveland Private Trust. He received an honorary degree from Miami University in 1984.
In announcing his death, the FDIC said that he is widely credited with helping to maintain stability in the financial system during a period of extraordinary stress, and that he remained an influential voice on banking issues long after his government service.
He is survived by his wife, Christine, and his family.
For further information, see: For further information, see:
https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2026/fdic-statement-passing-chairman-william-isaac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Isaac
https://www.americanbanker.com/news/former-fdic-chair-william-isaac-dies-at-82
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American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) is a diversified industrial group with manufacturing, distribution, and administrative sites in 24 countries across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia-New Zealand. AIAC has acquired and grown non-core subsidiaries and divisions of Boeing, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Johnson Controls, Merck, Pfizer, Astellas, Visteon, Carlyle, KKR, Ahlstrom, Novelis, Tolko, Groupe Suez, Groupe Rexel, and many other leading multinational corporations.
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