House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA) asked the Federal Reserve Board ("FRB") and FDIC (the "agencies") for more time to review the proposed merger of BB&T Corporation with SunTrust Banks, Inc.
In a letter to the agencies, Ms. Waters expressed concern over the FRB's approval process for bank mergers and acquisitions. Ms. Waters warned that the proposed merger would create the largest bank ever under FDIC supervision. Ms. Waters also stated that the proposed merger requires further Congressional review, given recent FRB data showing that 100 percent of the merger applications received between 2006 and 2017 were approved by the agency. As previously covered, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) also criticized the process, saying that "everything is happening behind closed doors," calling the bank merger process a "rubber stamp" in which the public gets to "weigh in" only after the merger is announced.
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