President Donald Trump officially eliminated a Biden-era rule that called for stricter federal reviews of some bank mergers.
Trump on Friday signed a resolution (S. J. Res. 13) repealing the rule from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, handing a win to banks that opposed the Biden administration’s changes.
Congress passed the repeal largely along party lines last month using the Congressional Review Act.
The OCC’s rule got rid of a decades-old policy under which the regulator automatically approved proposed bank mergers on the 15th day after the close of a public comment period if it failed to act. Biden OCC officials also eliminated a streamlined application processes for small bank mergers.
The OCC rule was part of a broader Biden administration focus on tightening antitrust policies.
The OCC took steps to rescind the regulation on its own in May. The agency also pulled back a related policy statement that subjected mergers resulting in a financial institution with at least $50 billion in assets and those meeting specified criteria for financial stability concerns to tougher scrutiny.
The OCC oversees national banks, such as the depository units of
Eliminating the OCC rule under the CRA means a future administration would be unable to craft a rule that looks much like the one Congress and Trump repealed.
The 1996 law, which gives Congress a 60-day window to repeal federal regulations with a simple-majority vote in both chambers and the president’s signature, bars federal regulatory agencies from writing a rule that is “substantially” similar to one that is repealed.
Trump previously signed repeals of other financial regulations using the CRA, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s $5 overdraft fee cap and a rule subjecting large digital payment companies to CFPB supervision.
The OCC isn’t the only federal banking regulator that moved to dial back its merger scrutiny. Also in May, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. voted to roll back a Biden-era policy that stiffened bank merger reviews.
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