On January 19, 2016, the Federal Reserve Board approved an application by Union di Banche Italiene, S.p.A., a foreign bank headquartered in Italy, to establish a representative office in New York under section 10(a) of the International Banking Act of 1978. UBI is organized as a joint stock corporation under Italian law and has total assets of approximately $108 billion. As part of its evaluation under the IBA and Regulation K, the Federal Reserve Board noted its previous determinations that other banks in Italy were subject to comprehensive, consolidated supervision by the Bank of Italy alone. However, UBI became subject to direct prudential supervision by the European Central Bank pursuant to the Single Supervisory Mechanism as of November 2014. This order appears to represent the first Federal Reserve Board order under the IBA since the SSM took effect, finding that a foreign bank is subject to comprehensive, consolidated supervision by the ECB and a home country supervisor (the Bank of Italy) acting through the SSM.
The order is available at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/orders/orders20160119a1.pdf.
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