What we also discovered in putting the list together was that in some instances, it became impossible to separate the captain from the team. This year’s D100 is a case in point: Our editors and board of advisors were nearly unanimous in our selection of President Barack Obama as this year’s most powerful corporate governance influence. And yet, to do justice to the seismic shift his policies have brought about in the boardroom, we also had to recognize the many other  “New Voices” in the Administration who are now leading the greatest financial reform of American business since the 1930s.

So, we ask that in the pages ahead you pay more attention to who counts, and less to how we count, in arriving at our final selection of individuals and institutions that have met the requirement to be “most influential.” We think you’ll agree it’s an intricate and impressive mosaic where the whole equals much more than the sum of its parts, which may or may not be greater than 100.

Regulators & Rulemakers

Team Obama
It is often written that reasonable people may disagree, and with Americans and their Presidents, it is practically a way of life. But even an unreasonable person could only conclude that this President and his Administration are having a profound and lasting influence over the boardroom. President Barack Obama has demonstrated an enormous capacity for calm in uncertain times. His relative youth leads to frequent comparisons to John F. Kennedy and his communications skills to those of Ronald Reagan. But it is his aggressive response to the unparalleled economic challenges that greeted him at the dawn of his young presidency that harkens back to an earlier figure of towering influence,  Franklin D. Roosevelt.

FDR’s massive social and financial reform programs—the creation of Social Security as part of the New Deal, the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC)—helped restore confidence in the nation’s banking system coming out of the Great Depression. One could plausibly take major portions of FDR’s New Deal and substitute his name with President Obama’s.  The implementation of the $787-billion American Economic Recovery Act one month after Obama took office, coupled with his handling of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which sought to strengthen the financial sector by buying up the assets and equity from troubled banks, has clearly helped the nation avoid further financial disaster and put the economy on the path to recovery.

And finally, turning again to the FDR playbook, Obama assembled a team of wise men and women, formidable economic and business minds, whose decisions are having a lasting effect on the role of the corporate director. Preeminent among them was the choice of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. Described as a veritable “influence machine,” within the Administration and Congress, the former Congressman from Obama’s home state of Illinois is known as a hard-charging, brutally candid, sometimes combative, acutely intelligent man who can get things done and knows the ways of the Capitol and the boardroom.

The Enforcers
Perhaps second only to Obama in terms of her influence on boards and corporate governance, career regulator Mary Schapiro heads up the 75-year-old SEC. Before the crisis, the agency’s very existence was in question: “Obsolete,” “out of touch,” and “behind the times” were just some of the many terms uttered by detractors. The Commission, under former chairman Christopher Cox, was pilloried for missing the Madoff scandal.

As former SEC chairman and Directorship 100 Hall of Famer, Arthur Levitt described her: “She has the skills, the intellect, and the character to be a superb SEC chair.” But Schapiro will face a new kind of challenge in the role, not just that of proving her own qualifications, but also instituting a significant remodeling of the SEC itself, as she works to bring it into the new regulatory era.

Moving swiftly to address regulatory concerns in the wake of the financial crisis, the SEC has rolled out a series of proposals that could embody the biggest change to the rules of the game for directors in some time. Schapiro, who is no stranger to the boardroom, having served on the boards of Duke Energy and Kraft Foods, has overseen proposed rule changes on proxy access, broker voting, say on pay, and new requirements for disclosure on executive compensation and director qualifications. It’s now up to her and fellow commissioners Kathleen Casey, Elisse Walter, Luis Aguilar, and Troy Paredes to determine the final regulations that emerge from the proposals.

Other key players Schapiro has brought into the SEC include Senior Advisor Kayla Gillan, Chief Accountant James Kroeker, and Director of Enforcement Robert Khuzami. Gillan was a founding board member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and former general counsel to CalPERS. Kroeker joined the SEC as deputy chief accountant in 2007 from Deloitte and Touche where he had been a partner in the firm’s national accounting services group. Kroeker recently said that the proposed road map for the convergence of International Financial Reporting Standards,pushed to the back burner amid the larger issues of market reform, would be restored as another top priority. Khuzami is a former federal prosecutor, has pledged to improve the SEC’s enforcement performance by creating specialized units to provide “structure and resources for staff to ‘get smart’ about certain products, markets, regulatory regimes, practices and transactions.”

TARP Overseers
Another example of Obama’s preference for brains over politics was his reappointment of Sheila Bair to chair the FDIC. Another fiscally conservative Republican, on Bair’s watch alone this year, 94 banks have failed, creating a new challenge:  how to replenish the fund. Bair has also been an integral part of the team overseeing TARP. Neil Barofsky is a former New York assistant attorney general confirmed by the Senate in December as special inspector general. Dubbed the “TARP Cop,” his job is to figure out how and where the $700-billion TARP funds are spent, reporting directly to the President and providing updates to the Congressional Oversight Panel chaired by bankruptcy expert and Harvard Law School professor, Elizabeth Warren. COP’s first report, released in February, casti-  gated then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for his performance and lack of transparency, reporting that the Treasury Department  had overpaid by $78 billion for the assets it bought from banks.

Interestingly, while Obama sponsored and was a strong proponent of  “say on pay” legislation while a senator, since appointing Kenneth Feinberg special master of compensation, he has appeared unwilling to make the issue a top priority. Feinberg, who has immersed himself in some of the country’s most troublesome and high-profile cases, is considered a superb choice, both in terms of skill and temperament, by Capitol Hill insiders. His most noteworthy case was the 33 months of pro-bono work he did following the 2001 terrorist attacks to determine how much each victim would receive from the federal government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Feinberg may in fact be perfectly suited for a job that most compensation specialists see as thankless, and possibly as a “no win” situation. As the Obama Administration’s comp expert, Feinberg was called on to monitor the compensation of executives in what were once some of America’s most prestigious corporations, now TARP recipients, including American International Group (AIG), Bank of America, Citibank, Chrysler, GMAC, and General Motors.

Fed to the Rescue
To prevent American capitalism from spiraling deeper into the abyss, nine months after President Obama made his first Cabinet announcement, he re-nominated Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman. The former Princeton economics professor was selected by Bush in 2005 to succeed Alan Greenspan. In 2008 after the market crashed, Bernanke invoked emergency powers, slashed interest rates, and spent trillions of dollars to right the financial system. Just last month, he declared the recession “likely over.” Though he seldom gives interviews, Bernanke is never far from the public eye and has been a stalwart in the transition between presidential administrations and in the effort to stem the economic slide.

When then President-elect Obama named his economics team, it included players who, like Bernanke, were already steeped in the crisis details, demonstrated a studied understanding of Depression-era economics, or some combination of both. Enter Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Chief White House Economic Advisor Lawrence H. Summers. Geithner, who is currently pushing legislation to provide more systematic regulation of financial institutions, including new limits on executive compensation, recently told one interviewer that he is optimistic major reforms will be passed.

Prior to his appointment replacing Henry Paulson, Geithner was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and part of the team central to the critical negotiations that resulted in Bear Stearns being tucked into JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch going to Bank of America, Lehman Bros. disappearing, and Citigroup and other struggling banks getting a lifeline.

Summers, the former Harvard University economist who became its president following his tenure as Treasury Secretary to President Clinton, is director of the Cabinet’s National Economic Council. The group was established in 1993 to coordinate and ensure that the President’s economic policy agenda is carried out.

Rounding out the team, Paul Volcker, the former Fed chief under Clinton, was selected to chair the president’s economic recovery advisory board. And Christina Romer, a former UC Berkeley economist, who administration sources suggest is well- regarded by both parties, chairs the Council of Economic Advisers. Her appointment was seen as a further triumph of brain over politics in Obama’s approach to talent recruitment.

The private equity firm, one of this country’s most politically connected, also agreed to end the use of placement agents, who work as middlemen between funds and investment managers and have been at the center of multiple corruption charges.

Other fund managers will also feel the heat as the Securities and Exchange Commission deliberates possible bans on contributions to officials overseeing pension funds.

Carlyle, which manages $85 billion in assets, has agreed to adopt restrictions pertaining to financial contributions to those people who have access to or control over public pension funds. The private equity firm has also agreed not to hire lobbyists to make bids on pension business.

The private equity firm also will make a settlement payment of $20 million. Carlyle said that it hopes the agreement will “set a new standard for ethics in the industry.”

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo billed his moves against Carlyle as an effort to stem the use of undue influence by certain brokers who have lines to Washington. “People have grown to accept a certain level of corruption,” said Cuomo. “We want to stop politically connected brokers who are just selling access.”

Cuomo told the NYT that in a preliminary review by his office found that as many as half of the intermediaries in pension fund transactions in New York State and New York City were not properly licensed and registered with a broker-dealer, as required by federal securities laws. Failing to register could violate the Martin Act.

“The troubling pattern of unlicensed agents highlights yet another systemic weakness in New York’s pension fund, creating a situation which is fraught with peril and prone to abuse,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Cuomo conferred with the offices of 35 other attorneys general and raised questions about public investment practices in other states, in particular New Mexico and California.

Wetherly Capital Group is among the firms being scrutinized by Cuomo. Wetherly is a Los Angeles-based placement agent firm run by Dan Weinstein, a prominent Democratic fund-raised. Wetherly is being examined for his payment to a firm affiliated with Hank Morris, a top aid to Alan G. Hevesi, the former New York State comptroller as part of an investment deal it brokered for CalPERS.

Gold Bridge Capital is also under investigation because the firm acted as a placement agent on at least one deal involving the New York State pension fund.

The New York attorney general brought a new criminal charge in its investigation into an alleged “ongoing scam” or kickback scheme for investments from New York state’s pension fund, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The charge was filed against Saul Meyer, founder of Aldus Equity Partners. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed charges in a joint investigation into investment firms that allegedly made payments to middlemen to secure pension-fund business.

“This is a nexus of private-sector fraudulent operators meeting government and public-sector fraudulent operators,” New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo told the WSJ referring to the broader investigation. “I believe we are disclosing a national network of actors who often acted in concert across the country,” hurting retirees and taxpayers.

According to Cuomo, his staff is now coordinating investigations with law-enforcement agents in several states, including California, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Illinois. His office indicated that they are looking at the roles of lawyers and lobbyists in the pension-fund business.

Meyer was charged with one criminal felony count of securities fraud under New York’s Martin Act and pleaded not guilty.

The documents include personal testimony from Lewis as well as minutes from BofA board meetings, which demonstrate that former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke pushed the deal in spite of misgivings about Merrill’s 2008 losses. The acquired investment bank revealed $15.8 billion in Q4 losses only after the deal had been approved by shareholders at both companies.

According to Cuomo’s letter, both Paulson and Bernanke attempted to prevent public disclosure of the losses resulting from the acquisition. “I was instructed that ‘We do not want a public disclosure,’” testified Lewis. The decision to disclose “wasn’t up to me.”

“What we have uncovered about the Bank of America acquisition of Merrill raises fundamental questions about the interaction of regulators and those they regulate, as well as important issues of corporate responsibility and shareholder rights,” said Cuomo.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining potential new rules for the municipal-securities market, said Chairman Mary Schapiro to the Wall Street Journal.

Schapiro said that new rules could be proposed as soon as July. The SEC has found several cases of lax practices or wrongdoing connected with the finances of state and local governments.

Last month, the SEC filed civil charges against Hank Morris, a political adviser, alleging that he extracted improper fees in exchange for helping secure business from New York state’s public pension fund. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed an indictment. The probe is also looking into private-equity firm Quandrangle Group, founded by Steven Rattner, who is President Barack Obama’s car czar.

One suggestion under consideration would prohibit an investment adviser from managing funds for two years if that adviser made donations to elected political officials.

The New York Attorney General office’s investigation into an alleged pension pay-to-play scheme is setting its sights on 20 investment firms and whether they violated securities laws in pay fees for access to the New York state pension fund, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that his office criminally charged Raymond Harding, the former head of New York’s defunct Liberal Party, for allegedly receiving $800,000 in illegal fees.

Gary Naftalis, Harding’s lawyer, told WSJ, “Ray Harding is innocent of these charges.”

The attorney general also announced that ex-hedge-fund executive Barrett Wissman has pleaded guilty to criminal securities fraud in connection with his rols as an intermediary between the pension fund and investment firms. “From 2004 to 2007, Wissman acted as a finder in connection with certain investments that were presented to the New York State Common Retirement Fund,” said William A. Brewer III, Wissman’s lawyer. He said Wissman is cooperating in the investigation.

Authorities from the attorney general’s office and the Securities and Exchange Commission will be spending more time examining investment firms to assess whether the payments they made to receive pension money were improper. Cuomo told WSJ that he does expect additional charges.

Among the firms named in court documents as having paid fees to get business from the New York fund are the private-equity specialists Carlyle Group and Odyssey Investment Partners, and a hedge fund and a private-equity fund associated with Pequot Capital Management.

Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and other prominent Democrats appear to back the plan, although no new legislation has been introduced. “We plan to put laws into effect, no question,” said Frank.

“We have to address this ‘heads I win, tails I break even’ issue,” Frank said.

Cuomo is currently investigating the $3.62 billion in bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch executives just before it was acquired by Bank of America at the end of last year. He is trying to determine if the firm violated securities laws by failing to disclose information in the weeks leading up to the payouts.

A person close to Cuomo told WSJ that change is needed but the intent isn’t to micromanage or interfere with the private sector.

“We certainly need to understand the industry’s perspective on the potential unintended consequences of compensation reform before we finalize these long overdue changes,” the person said.

The disclosure was part of a court filing yesterday aimed at pressuring Bank of America, which acquired Merrill in January and is being investigated by Cuomo over $3.62 billion in bonuses paid by Merrill even as it was accumulating a net loss of $15.84 billion in the fourth quarter.

Bank of America has refused to hand over the names of Merrill employees who got bonuses, claiming that might hurt the bank’s ability to retain talent. Cuomo cited those details as reasons why a New York state-court judge should force the bank to disclose the information he wants.

A ruling is expected on Friday.

New York prosecutors are questioning whether the early payment of bonuses at Merrill Lynch last year gave the bank’s traders an incentive to mark downt he value of their trading positions at the end of December, reports The Financial Times.

New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has been investigating whether the payouts were sanctioned by Bank of America. Cuomo’s office is considering whether the early payments encouraged Merrill traders to mark down their portfolios—making it easier for them to post gains in January.

Three former Merrill Lynch executives told FT that traders made such changes to their books in late December.

A court filing is expected today, where Cuomo will respond to Bank of America’s argument that the disclosure of the individual bonus payments to Merrill employees in December would be an invasion of privacy.

Cuomo’s office is expected to argue that prosecutors need the details of specific bonus payments to determine whether important information was kept from Bank of America shareholders and the federal government who gave $45 billion in taxpayer funds to the bank.