Before the world’s largest retailer can open its own bank, it’ll have to speak to Sheila Bair.

And the Kansas University alum’s opinion will count a little more than most.

Bair this week was sworn in as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., making her the top policymaker for a government agency with 86 offices, 4,500 employees and responsibility for insuring $2.8 trillion in deposits in 8,800 banks and savings associations nationwide.

Also on the FDIC’s to-do list: ruling on Wal-Mart’s application for opening its own bank, a prospective market shift that already has been decried by some consumer advocates, feared by community banks and followed up last month by a similar application from another retail heavyweight, Home Depot.

“I am pleased to be joining the FDIC at such an important time,” Bair said this week, in a statement that cited a handful of regulatory issues but left Wal-Mart unmentioned. “I am looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead, and working closely with our highly experienced board and staff.”

Bair now is one of five commissioners who together will make the call on the banking applications of Wal-Mart and Home Depot, companies looking to cut their expenses on credit transactions by owning their own lenders. The FDIC also is working on reforming the deposit insurance system, seeking to charge banks for coverage based on their risk factors.

Sheila Bair, who received her bachelor's and law degrees at Kansas University, is sworn as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in Washington, D.C. Administering the oath Monday in the FDIC board room was Robert Feldman, FDIC executive secretary; holding the Bible is Alice Goodman, acting chief of staff. Bair is the 19th person to lead the board at the FDIC, established by Congress in 1933 to restore public confidence in the nation's banking system.

She moves into the post vacated by Donald Powell, who resigned in November to lead the federal government’s efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Martin Gruenberg had been serving as acting chairman.

That Bair has ascended to such a prominent post in Washington, D.C., is no surprise to Fred Lovitch. The KU law professor has kept up with Bair through the years, after Bair received her law degree in 1978 and soon found herself working as an attorney and adviser at the Department of Education.

Since then she’s worked as a counsel to then-Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and at a Washington law firm; been a commissioner and acting chairwoman of the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission; been a legislative counsel and senior vice president for government relations at the New York Stock Exchange; and served as assistant treasury secretary for financial institutions.

Now, with her appointment by President Bush to a five-year term approved by the Senate, Bair is putting her experience to work in yet another powerful operation.

“Clearly, anyone who achieves this position – as well as all the other positions she has – has remarkable ability and intelligence,” said Lovitch, who has been teaching at the law school since 1972. “But what’s most striking is the range and diversity of the things she’s done in such a short period of time. :

“It’s no surprise that she’s been this successful. This is a person of enormous energy and capacity.”