September 17, 2024

Warren Statement on Regulators’ Bank Merger Guidelines

Washington, D.C. – Today, in response to regulators’ updated guidance on oversight of mergers between banks, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the following statement:

“Wall Street banks like Capital One and Discover love mergers, but bigger is not better for Main Street. Bigger banks charge higher junk fees, provide lower quality service, crush community banks, and put taxpayers on the hook for bailouts when they crash. The Department of Justice’s work to fight consolidation across industries is powerfully important to safeguard our economy. It’s a dereliction of duty that, while the FDIC just finalized strong bank merger rules to protect competition, the Fed under Chair Powell is a dithering and futile regulator in protecting the economy after some of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history.”

Senator Warren is a leading voice on the financial system, advocating for critical regulations to protect consumers, the financial system, and the economy:

  • In June 2023, at a hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Senator Warren warned of the dangers of growing concentration in the banking system and called on three nominees to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Fed) – Dr. Phillip Jefferson, Dr. Lisa Cook, and Dr. Adriana Kugler – to institute the strongest possible bank merger guidelines and to reinstate tough financial regulations on big banks to protect consumers, the financial system, and the economy from serious risks posed by Too-Big-to-Fail banks.
  • On March 13, 2023, Senator Warren published an op-ed in the New York Times calling on Congress and federal regulators to strengthen weakened rules to avoid another crisis, intensify bank oversight, reform deposit insurance, and hold SVB executives accountable for any malfeasance or mismanagement that led to its failure.
  • In February 2023, Senator Warren delivered a speech at Open Markets Institute, urging regulators to put a stop to anticompetitive bank mergers and advance new bank merger guidelines. 
  • In September 2021, Senator Warren, along with Representative Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), reintroduced the Bank Merger Review Modernization Act to restrict harmful consolidation in the banking industry and protect consumers and the financial system from “Too Big to Fail” institutions, like those that caused the 2008 financial crisis.
  • In August 2021,  at a hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Senator Warren raised concerns to federal regulators regarding the insufficient process in place to review bank mergers, which has resulted in no formal bank merger denials in 15 years.
  • In October 2020, Senator Warren sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, head of the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division, to raise concerns that in updating its 1995 Bank Merger Competitive Review guidelines for the first time in 25 years, DOJ “seeks to weaken the already insufficient process currently in place to review bank mergers, making it even easier for these mergers to occur.”

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