President of Richmond Fed Bank retiring in October

WASHINGTON (AP) - Jeffrey Lacker, the president of the Federal Reserve's Richmond bank, announced Tuesday that he plans to retire on Oct. 1, stepping down after 28 years at the bank.

Lacker becomes the second of the Fed's 12 regional bank presidents who will be departing this year. Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart is retiring at the end of February.

Margaret Lewis, chair of the Richmond Fed's board of directors, said that she would lead a search committee to select a successor. Lacker, who had been an economics professor at Purdue University, joined the Richmond Fed in 1989 and served in a variety of leadership positions before becoming president of the bank in August 2004.

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This story has been corrected to say that Lacker's retirement announcement was made on Tuesday, not Wednesday.