If US banking regulation was a seventies cop drama, Benjamin Lawsky would probably drive a black Lincoln Continental. He would also stub out cigarettes on his bare palms and spend his evenings shining desk lamps into the terrified eyes of bank executives.

Lawsky, the superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, has taken on the persona of the hard cop of Wall Street since he accused Standard Chartered of illegally scheming over a decade to hide more than 60,000 financial transactions totalling $250bn for Iranian clients.