Regulators have taken a tougher stance on M&A. You’ve compared it to a line from Casablanca — they wait and they wait and they wait. What does that mean for the industry? There’s a cost to time. In 2021, the two largest bank transactions were approved in about five months. Today, applications from large banks are taking a year or more to approve. When you increase the amount of time, you lose customers and employees. There’s the additional loss of business opportunities and revenue, and expense synergies get further delayed. Something I want to point out is the Fed’s data on processing time, which shows a clear dichotomy between the time it takes to approve a protested application versus a nonprotested application. Agencies should reconsider what constitutes a substantive, credible protest because the differential between protested and nonprotested seems to occur irrespective of the protester’s credibility. Is there a way for banks to satisfy regulatory concerns over M&A other than waiting longer? Or do they just need to understand approval is going to take a year instead of six months? I think your premise is correct; it’s a question of time rather than substance. If you look at the approval orders from the Federal Reserve and OCC on the U.S. Bank/MUFG Union Bank and BMO/Bank of the West transactions — the largest approvals in some time. It’s 16
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