Former investment banker Peter Goettler will be the new head of the Cato Institute, the influential libertarian think tank announced Monday.
Goettler will replace outgoing CEO John Allison, who is retiring after leading the organization for two years. A Cato representative said Allison, who was the chairman and CEO of the bank BB&T before joining Cato, had planned to leave after his second year.
“In one policy area after another, Cato’s scholarship has highlighted the ill effects of state intervention on both freedom and economic growth,” Goettler said. “In the process, Cato’s work has helped to limit government and protect our liberty.”
Goettler will lead the Cato Institute’s efforts to promote libertarian scholarship and policies. The organization expects $36.3 million in revenue for 2015, it said Monday morning.
Among other libertarian priorities, Cato scholars promote less government spending, non-interventionist foreign policy, liberalized immigration and looser regulation of drugs. Cato scholars have been at the center of the high-profile case currently before the Supreme Court concerning the validity of federal subsidies to enrollees in state health care exchanges.
Allison became CEO of the think tank in 2012 after a dispute over control between then-CEO Ed Crane and the businessmen Charles and David Koch.
During Allison’s tenure, Cato said, revenue grew by 64 percent and the organization started two new internal policy centers: The Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, which the think tank boasted would challenge the Federal Reserve’s control of monetary and financial regulatory policy; and the Center for the Study of Science, which examines funding of scientific research.
Goettler retired in 2008 as a managing director at the investment banking arm of Barclays. He joined Cato’s board of directors last year.
