Trade group suing to preserve right to links with corporates.

The Credit Union National Association voted Tuesday to sue the government over a regulation altering management of the industry's liquidity centers.

The trade group is suing the National Credit Union Administration over its plans to split shared management between trade groups and corporate credit unions.

"Basically we're saying the agency lacked any reasonable factual basis for the regulation," the group's president, Ralph Swoboda, said in an interview. The Madison, Wis.-based group expects to file its lawsuit in January.

The chairman of the regulatory agency, Norman E. D'Amours, has said most credit unions favor splitting interlocks between the trade association and corporates.

"It is always unfortunate when the dues of a majority are misapplied to support the views of a minority," he said in a press release Wednesday. "I am fully confident that the lawsuit is ill-advised and that it will fail."

The trade group also took a tough stance against the regulator's strict implementation of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's mark-to-market rule, authorizing a lawsuit if the agency doesn't make its intepretation more like those of other regulators. The NCUA has taken a harder line on the rule than other banking agencies. For example, the regulator requires credit unions to subtract unrealized losses from capital.

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