Corporate America glad to see Levin go

Politico took a look at Sen. Carl Levin’s impending retirement and came up with an interesting take – corporate America will breathe a sigh of relief when the Michigan Democrat is gone.

In his watchdog role as chair of the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, according to Politico, Levin’s list of accomplishments are substantial:

His investigation into tax shelters helped set the stage for Swiss banking giant UBS to admit it helped thousands of Americans dodge taxes and, later, Credit Suisse to plead guilty to conspiracy and pay more than $2.6 billion in fines. His financial crisis probes opened the doors for Dodd-Frank, including the so-called Volcker rule — a major change to banking hard fought by industry. He held two years of hearings on money laundering by financial services companies that helped create the evidence to support anti-money laundering provisions in the PATRIOT Act.

The “secret sauce” for Levin’s success, one political insider told Politico, is that his committee consists of probably the hardest-working staff on Capitol Hill.

Here’s how Politico described the longtime senator’s legacy:

“In corporate America, the scariest seat in Washington is the front row of a hearing room where Carl Levin holds the gavel.

“The Michigan native runs the obscure Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), wielding the panel’s unique subpoena power to shine a harsh light on the otherwise unseen financial workings of the country’s largest corporations — from Apple to JPMorgan Chase. His retirement as of January has executives exhaling.

“‘The first thing I tell people is, PSI stands for ‘pretty scary investigations,’ said Reginald Brown, vice chair of the Financial Institutions Practice Group at the law firm WilmerHale, who has represented several Levin targets. ‘There probably will be some people who will sleep easier [once he is gone].’

“After more than a dozen years at PSI, Levin is just four months and one final report from packing up mountains of investigative history and going home. That leaves the future of probes into the kind of financial wrongdoing that Levin has unearthed — from the convoluted tax maneuvers of the biggest tech companies to the dicing of mortgages in the run-up to the financial crisis — murky.”