On March 21, 2016, the US Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System approved the application by Goldman Sachs Bank USA under the Bank Merger Act to assume substantially all (approximately $17 billion) of the deposit liabilities and certain assets of GE Capital Bank, a subsidiary of General Electric Corporation, including assets GE Bank uses to manage its online deposit-taking platform. The acquisition was announced in August 2015, and the Federal Reserve Board extended processing of GS Bank's application in light of numerous public comments that challenged the transaction on various grounds, including that GS is already too big to fail. In approving the transaction, among other findings, the Federal Reserve Board concluded that the transaction would have a negligible impact on the systemic footprint of GS (which has approximately $860 billion in total assets) and would improve the stability of funding available to GS Bank by diversifying its sources of funding.

The Federal Reserve Board order is available at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/orders/orders20160321a1.pdf.

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