Charles Kennington, a former fiscal and tax analyst for the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee, also will serve as deputy secretary of finance in the new administration.
Their experience is likely to help Cummings, 66, who retired last spring after more than 40 years in banking and financial services, most recently as president and CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group in the Americas.
“I’m long in finance,” he told the committee. “I’ve managed complex budgets, but I’ve never been in public service.”
Cummings acknowledged that he is starting the job with the state in flush financial position, with a $2.6 billion surplus in the fiscal year that ended on June 30 and a two-year budget that anticipates billions of dollars in additional revenues under a forecast adopted in the fall.
Last week, the Northam administration announced a 19.2% increase in revenues in December, compared with the same month a year earlier, and a 14.1% increase in the first six months of the fiscal year.
Cummings said he takes the long view of financial windfalls after a career that began in 1979 in New York and took him to Charlotte, N.C., where he was executive for what became Wachovia Corp.
He also worked as managing director and chairman of the United Bank of Switzerland’s investment banking division in the Americas before joining Mitsubishi in 2015.
