US regulator streamlines bank merger reviews

By Pete Schroeder

(Reuters) -A leading U.S. bank regulator on Thursday reestablished a streamlined process for considering bank mergers, and scrapped an earlier policy statement suggesting larger bank deals would merit closer scrutiny.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued an interim final rule that effectively erases a rule the regulator adopted under President Joe Biden, which would have mandated a more deliberate approach to considering bank mergers, particularly for deals that would result in banks with over $50 billion in assets.

The move is in line with the Trump administration's efforts to reduce the government's footprint in the private sector, as part of its bid to spur further economic growth.

"The OCC's actions today reduce burden and uncertainty for banks and supports a regulatory framework for bank mergers that is effective and not excessive," said Acting Comptroller of the Currency Rodney Hood in a statement.

The new rule reverses course from a policy the OCC adopted in 2024, wherein the regulator did away with a process that allowed for some bank deals to be automatically approved after a certain period of time.

The new rule also scraps a policy statement the OCC adopted alongside that stricter framework. There, the OCC provided guidelines for what sort of bank deals were likely to merit closer scrutiny. Among the factors cited included if either of the banks has outstanding supervisory issues, or if the resulting firm will exceed $50 billion in assets.

The banking industry opposed that policy statement, arguing it could discourage or disqualify legitimate deals.

(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Andrea Ricci)

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