Approved

The Federal Reserve Board gave Bank of America the green light for the latter’s purchase of Merrill Lynch, proving that in today’s roiling financial sector some rules are very notional. The order duly noted that BofA’s $1.8 trillion worth of consolidated assets makes the bank the biggest depository institution in the U.S.. BofA controls deposits of some $774.2 billion, or 10.8 percent of the total deposits in U.S. insured depository institutions. When you add Merrill’s numbers, that percentage grows to 11.9 percent. The Board decided there’s enough competition left, and that lucky Merrill customers will benefit from “access to additional bank and nonbanking products and services” from BofA. And so another chapter of Too Big to Fail draws to a close.