The debate on banks conducting financial activities through operating subsidiaries has been portrayed as a battle between the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. The Treasury believes banks should be permitted to conduct expanded activities through direct subsidiaries. The Fed wants these activities to be conducted only through holding company affiliates.
Curiously, the concerns of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have been largely ignored. The FDIC, alone among the agencies, has no "turf" at stake in this issue, as its supervisory reach extends to any affiliate of a bank. The FDIC's sole motivation is to safeguard the nation's banks against systemic risks.
In the early 1980s, when one of us, William Isaac, became the first FDIC chairman to testify on this subject, he was responding to a financial modernization proposal to authorize banks to expand their activities through holding company affiliates.
While endorsing the thrust of the bill, he objected to requiring that activities be conducted in the holding company format. Every subsequent FDIC chairman, including the current one, has taken the same position, favoring bank subsidiaries (except Bill Taylor who, due to his untimely death, never expressed his views). Each has had the full backing of the FDIC professional staff on this issue.
The bank holding company is a U.S. invention; no other major country requires this format. It has inherent problems, apart from its inefficiency. For example, there is a built-in conflict of interest between a bank and its parent holding company when financial problems arise. The FDIC is still fighting a lawsuit with creditors of the failed Bank of New England about whether the holding company's directors violated their fiduciary duty by putting cash into the troubled lead bank.
Whether financial activities such as securities and insurance underwriting are in a bank subsidiary or a holding company affiliate, it is important that they be capitalized and funded separately from the bank. If we require this separation, the bank will be exposed to the identical risk of loss whether the company is organized as a bank subsidiary or a holding company affiliate.
The big difference between the two forms of organization comes when the activity is successful, which presumably will be most of the time. If the successful activity is conducted in a subsidiary of the bank, the profits will accrue to the bank.
Should the bank get into difficulty, it will be able to sell the subsidiary to raise funds to shore up the bank's capital. Should the bank fail, the FDIC will own the subsidiary and can reduce its losses by selling the subsidiary.
If the company is instead owned by the bank's parent, the profits of the company will not directly benefit the bank. Should the bank fail, the FDIC will not be entitled to sell the company to reduce its losses.
Requiring that bank-related activities be conducted in holding company affiliates will place insured banks in the worst possible position. They will be exposed to the risk of the affiliates' failure without reaping the benefits of the affiliates' successes.
Three times during the 1980s, the FDIC's warnings to Congress on safety and soundness issues went unheeded, due largely to pressures from special interests:
The FDIC urged in 1980 that deposit insurance not be increased from $40,000 to $100,000 while interest rates were being deregulated.
The FDIC urged in 1983 that money brokers be prohibited from dumping fully insured deposits into weak banks and S&Ls paying the highest interest.
The FDIC urged in 1984 that the S&L insurance fund be merged into the FDIC to allow the cleanup of the S&L problems before they spun out of control.
The failure to heed these warnings-from the agency charged with insuring the soundness of the banking system and covering its losses-cost banks and S&Ls, their customers, and taxpayers many tens of billions of dollars.
Ignoring the FDIC's strongly held views on how bank-related activities should be organized could well lead to history repeating itself. The holding company model is inferior to the bank subsidiary approach and should not be mandated by Congress.
