U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is urging the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to ensure that any bank-approved bank mergers serve communities and small businesses as opposed to large corporations.
Brown urged the Fed and OCC to follow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which recently put out a request for information to gauge the effectiveness of the current bank merger framework in meeting the requirements of the Bank Merger Act with respect to the approval of bank mergers.
“Enabled by rubber-stamp merger oversight, the biggest banks have only grown bigger and consolidated their dominance—the last few years have made this trend obvious. This consolidation has enriched big bank shareholders and executives, buoyed by record bank profits. But their gains have come at the expense of consumers and small businesses with less access to low-cost financial services. The data is clear about the serious, wide-ranging harms that bank mergers impose on communities,” Brown wrote in a letter to Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell and Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu.
Brown requested that the two leaders initiate a public comment process on bank merger review, like the FDIC’s.
“In light for the growing concern of how concentration hinders free markets, a public comment process would allow Americans to share how mergers have affected their communities and allow the agencies to reconsider their approval frameworks to better focus on small businesses, consumers and families, as Congress intended,” Brown wrote.