{"id":198408,"date":"2019-12-16T14:17:28","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T14:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/elizabeth-warren-seeks-answers-from-the-fed-fdic-on-28-billion-suntrust-bbt-merger-approval.html"},"modified":"2019-12-16T14:17:28","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T14:17:28","slug":"elizabeth-warren-seeks-answers-from-the-fed-fdic-on-28-billion-suntrust-bbt-merger-approval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/elizabeth-warren-seeks-answers-from-the-fed-fdic-on-28-billion-suntrust-bbt-merger-approval.html","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Warren seeks answers from the Fed, FDIC on $28 billion SunTrust-BB&T merger approval"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren<\/a> earlier this month sent a letter to Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, questioning regulators’ approval of the largest bank deal since the financial crisis.<\/p>\n

The letter, obtained by CNBC, asks regulators to defend their decision earlier this year to approve the $28 billion merger of regional banks BBT and SunTrust. The deal, which closed Dec. 6. has been a lightning rod for Democrats who believe its approval symbolizes a weakening in U.S. regulation of financial institutions under President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

The merger created Truist, the country’s sixth-largest bank with $450 billion in assets. Truist agreed to selling off roughly $2.3 billion in deposits in seven markets<\/a> to secure deal approval.<\/p>\n

“Countrywide was a $200 billion institution when it failed. Washington Mutual was $307 billion. Their failure presented material risks to the financial system. Why does the Fed believe that the failure of a $450 billion institution would not present risks to the financial system?” asked Warren and the letter’s co-author, Rep. Jes\u00fas Garc\u00eda, D-Ill. The two asked the same question of the FDIC.<\/p>\n

The letter, dated Dec. 12, comes weeks after Warren and Garcia introduced their Bank Merger Review Modernization Act to tighten oversight of America’s bank deal approval process. The two have argued that, if the act had been passed prior to the Truist deal, it would have been blocked.<\/p>\n

Though unlikely go past a Republican-controlled Senate, the proposal puts a spotlight on the review process for banks, which Warren and Garcia decry as “fundamentally broken.”<\/p>\n

Today, all bank deals must be approved by the Fed, the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Warren and Garcia believe the agencies often review the deals with banks in secret, prior to their being announced. They also say the agencies focus too much on their impact on the industry, rather than also looking at the consumer.<\/p>\n

Of the 3,819 bank merger applications the Fed has received between 2006 and 2017, 3,316 have been approved, and the rest were withdrawn<\/a>. It has rejected none of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As remedy, Warren and Garcia want the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to have a say in the approval process. The CFPB is the brainchild of Warren, created after the financial crisis to protect consumers from financial institutions. Warren and Garcia want regulators to focus more on the effects of a merger on a community, like market concentration of individual banking products and credit that matches community needs.<\/p>\n

Article source: https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2019\/12\/16\/warren-questions-the-fed-fdic-on-approval-of-bbt--suntrust-deal.html<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren earlier this month sent a letter to Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, questioning regulators’ approval of the largest bank deal since the financial crisis. The letter, obtained by CNBC, asks regulators to defend their decision earlier this year to approve the $28 billion merger of regional banks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-198408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}