U.S. Banks Spawn 10,000 Units Worldwide to Cut Taxes
The biggest U.S. banks created more than 10,000 subsidiaries in the past 22 years as they expanded, using legal structures to pay lower taxes and escape tighter regulation, according to a Federal Reserve study.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the largest U.S. lender, has the most units at 3,391, followed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) with more than 2,000 each, the study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows. Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest lender, has 1,645.
Critics including Thomas Hoenig, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board member, say the biggest firms are too complicated to manage. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act asked the FDIC and Fed to make sure the largest banks, if they get into trouble, can be wound down without collapsing the rest of the financial system. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown has proposed legislation to force their breakup.
"When regulators are left to curtail the risk of trillion-dollar megabanks with hundreds of affiliates, we know that too big to fail is also too big to manage" said Brown, an Ohio Democrat and member of the Senate Banking Committee.
The 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act was the main catalyst for the biggest banks getting bigger, the Fed study concluded. The assets of the largest lenders have since tripled to $15 trillion. Hoenig has called for reinstating Glass-Steagall, which separated investment and commercial banking, while Brown's proposal would limit asset size.
