Richard Spillenkothen earned his MBA in 1975 and devoted his career to the Federal Reserve Board. In 1992, he was appointed director of the banking supervision and regulation division for the Federal Reserve System.
In this capacity, he represented the Federal Reserve as its senior state official in the international supervisory committee, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. As a member of this committee, he was a key player in obtaining an international agreement of capital standards for market risk in trading and foreign exchange activities.
He was also instrumental in generating supervisory policies and actions to manage bank crises, developing capital adequacy guidelines for state member banks and bank holding companies, overseeing the growth of financial assets subject to primary supervision by the Federal Reserve, and spearheading the Federal Reserve's efforts to maintain the soundness of banking systems, both domestically and internationally.