As director of the FDIC's new Office of Complex Financial Institutions, Wigand will be responsible for keeping an eye on some of the nation's largest and most complex financial firms and making sure the government is prepared to seize and liquidate them should they falter.

This "resolution authority," created under the landmark financial regulation bill enacted last year, gives the government broad powers it didn't possess two years ago when companies such as Lehman Brothers and American International Group spiraled toward bankruptcy. Back then, federal officials faced an unenviable choice - allow the firms to collapse into bankruptcy, possibly dragging others down with them, or put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk to bail them out.