Stress tests

House Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said House lawmakers are having discussions with the Senate about ways to go further on rolling back Dodd-Frank before the Senate is expected to hold a floor vote.

Banks may start paying special dividends now that capital levels have improved.

The California company has agreed to buy Grandpoint Capital, a business bank in Los Angeles, for $641 million.

Banks will have to show they can withstand “severely adverse” conditions; the office will be under the direct control of acting director Mick Mulvaney.

The Fed released its stress testing scenarios for banks this year, raising the bar on what constitutes severely adverse hypothetical market conditions.

Swelling capital levels, tax cuts and changing attitudes about post-crisis regulation could encourage bigger banks to issue the one-time payouts to reward shareholders and better manage their returns.

Over the past year, the focus of several banking policymakers has been how much the regulatory pendulum might swing back toward the industry’s liking. That theme will likely continue in 2018.

The McLean, Va., company and several other banks have disclosed the charges they expect to record in the fourth quarter due to lower values on their deferred tax assets.

The holding company structure makes sense for large banks with complex business models and small banks looking to bulk up through acquisitions. But for a large swath of banks in the middle, the benefits are harder to spot.

The 2010 law does very little to constrain regulatory power, explaining why Republicans pushed for reforms during the Obama presidency and why, under President Trump, Democrats are so vigorously opposing agency management changes.