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The anger against the country's biggest banks is ready to boil over, Harris Simmons, the chairman and chief executive of Zions Bancorp., warned Wednesday.
March 14 -
Demands for action to fix "too big to fail" are near a fever pitch. Following are the most likely scerios for how the debate is resolved.
March 22 -
William B. Harrison Jr., who helped create JPMorgan Chase, on Tuesday offered a resounding defense of megabanks and the good he said they do for customers and investors.
January 9
The movement to break up the biggest banks has gained considerably more traction than many of the industry's most vocal defenders expected, the former Chairman and Chief Executive of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) said.
William B. Harrison, Jr. has been
"I have been surprised by the traction on this subject," Harrison said in a video interview with American Banker recently. "It's gotten more traction than I would have hoped, or liked, or thought."
The renewed debate over a big bank breakup was effectively sparked last summer by one of Harrison's fellow industry veterans, former Citigroup (NYSE:C) Chairman and CEO Sandy Weill. Since then, top regulators have expressed support for the idea; Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has called for the biggest banks to be dismantled. And in Congress, a bill that would effectively do just that has been offered by Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and David Vitter, R-La.
Some bankers are pessimistic about the industry's ability to continue rebuffing breakup attempts, especially in the wake of ongoing controversies involving JPMorgan Chase's London Whale trading losses and several large banks' efforts to manipulate the Libor rates. Zions Bancorp. (ZION) CEO Harris Simmons recently warned that big banks are
Harrison is less concerned about an imminent breakup.
"It would certainly be negative, but I just don't know what would be a tipping point, because right now I don't think it will happen," he said.