Dubai Financial Services Authority's CEO Christopher Calabia has stepped down after nine months in the role.
In a statement on 29 July, the board of directors of the DFSA said it had "accepted the resignation of F. Christopher Calabia, effective 31 August 2022. Chris joined the DFSA in October 2021 and is stepping down to return to the United States for family-related reasons.
"Ian Johnston, who served as the DFSA's Chief Executive from 2012 to 2018, will reprise his role from 1 September 2022. Over the past four years, Ian has been consulting to regulators and policy makers in Asia, Europe and the Middle East and has undertaken projects funded by the World Bank and the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Ian has also served on the DFSA's Legislative Committee since January 2022.
Fadel Al Ali, chairman of the DFSA, said: "The DFSA thanks Chris for his service over the past year and we wish him the very best as he returns to the United States. We look forward to welcoming Ian back to lead the DFSA."
F. Christopher Calabia became chief executive of the DSFA on 1 October 2021, joining the DFSA as an experienced supervisor with expertise in global standards and innovation.
Prior to his appointment, he worked from 2017-2021 at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the Senior Advisor for Supervisory & Regulatory Policy in Financial Services for the Poor.
He led the Foundation's global initiatives to promote regulations and technology that expand the use of digital financial services among underserved women and the unbanked. His career in supervision began as a bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1993.
Over the next 24 years, he held a number of supervisory and policy roles, including serving as the senior supervisor for one of the largest U.S. banks and later as the Senior Vice President of Regional, Community, Foreign Institution, and Consumer Compliance Supervision, overseeing 200 U.S. and foreign firms.
Externally, he co-led the International Monetary Fund's 2016 evaluation of the U.K.'s post-crisis approach to banking supervision on secondment. He was also seconded to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in Switzerland from 2003-2005 to support revisions to the global capital framework.
He is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist, a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (M.A.L.D.), and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia (B.A.). More recently he earned certificates in Digital Money and Blockchain. He speaks fluent German, some Japanese and French, and is looking forward to learning Arabic.
