Enlarge This ImageBig banks love their biggest customers, but the feeling isn't always mutual.
That has become evident as the nation's largest banks try to fend off a fresh wave of criticism that their size and marriage of investment and commercial banking pose a grave risk to the financial system.
In their defense, the big banks' trade groups and executives have argued that their very size is a huge asset to the economy. Banks with more than $50 billion of assets "provide $50 billion to $110 billion annually in benefits to companies, consumers and governments," the Clearing House asserted last month in defending big banks' "social utility."
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has argued that big corporate customers rely heavily on the sophisticated financial services only megabanks can provide, including big loans, global cash management and deal advice.
"We bank some of the largest global multinationals in America and around the world," Dimon testified at a Senate Banking Committee hearing in June on JPMorgan's massive trading losses. "We can do $5 billion revolvers or raise money for America's Fortune 100 companies in a day or two when they needed to do something. …These are services they need."
Claiming big multinationals "need" big banks might be a bit of an exaggeration, say treasurers at those large companies. Yes, a separation of banks' commercial and capital markets operations would inconvenience big businesses and raise costs, corporate treasurers and their representatives acknowledge. But for big businesses there are downsides to dealing with giant financial firms as well—and they are in no rush to defend the megabanks.
"Is it going to have a material detrimental impact on corporate America if they were broken up? I doubt that," says Jeff A. Glenzer, who oversees public policy for the Association for Financial Professionals, which represents corporate financial executives.
"I have not heard" the association's members voice any support for big banks nor demand a breakup, he says.
Nobody interviewed for this article advocated breaking up big banks, but corporate officials carefully expressed frustrations with the side effects of the megabanks' heft. The growing concentration of banking industry assets since the financial crisis has made dealing with the largest banks inevitable for many companies — and often requires buying a bundle of services to get the best deals on credit.
"For years now there's been a trend of banks making credit commitments as part of an overall decision on the profitability of a client. That includes a mix of credit business and fee-generating business," says Thomas C. Deas, Jr., the treasurer of chemical company FMC Corp. (FMC) and the chairman of the National Association of Corporate Treasurers, a trade group.
FMC, which reported revenue of $3.4 billion last year, is a "capital-intensive business" with a regular need for credit, he says. But when the company renegotiated a $1.5 billion credit facility with a group of banks last year, some lenders dropped out in what Deas calls "a self-selection process by banks who felt that the balance between credit commitment and fee-generating business was not in balance to their liking."
"There's a finite set of services that a company like FMC needs in cash management, in international banking services, in trade finance, foreign exchange, debt underwriting — all those ancillary services on which banks get additional fees," he says. "The trend in order to achieve this balance has resulted in a smaller group of more capable banks making bigger individual credit commitments."
