As Washington pushes banks to mend their finances, the banks are pushing back.
Emboldened by newfound profits and eager to shake off federal control, a growing number of banks are resisting the Obama administration’s proposals for fixing the financial system. Lenders that skirted disaster only months ago with the help of taxpayer dollars are now balking at government prescriptions.
Despite pressure from federal regulators, industry executives are taking issue with major elements of the president’s bank plan. Administration officials characterize each part of their three-pronged approach as crucial to bolstering banks and restarting the economy. But bankers are increasingly eager to extricate themselves from the government’s grasp, and worry that Washington will impose new restrictions on their businesses if the government’s already considerable role in the industry grows.
“The pushback has been pretty hard,” said Frederick Cannon, the chief equity strategist of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods and a specialist in banking stocks. “If we don’t address these issues, that could have a negative effect on economic growth, which in turn makes the banks’ problems worse.”
As the Obama administration marks its first 100 days, the banks’ resistance is complicating the government’s effort to solve some of the thorniest problems of the financial crisis. Opposition is building on several fronts.
Citigroup, Bank of America and other big banks are disputing so-called stress tests being conducted by federal examiners to determine how these institutions would withstand a deep, prolonged recession. The banks contend they are in better shape than the early findings suggest, although it is likely several will need to raise capital.
A Treasury plan to purge banks of their troublesome assets — a seemingly intractable problem — has received a lukewarm response in banking circles. Several big banks have declared they have no intention of participating in the program. Another major effort, one to revive credit for everything from car loans to equipment leases, has also gotten off to a slow start.
Administration officials said Tuesday that their efforts were going according to plan. They said that more than 100 private money managers had signed up for the program to buy troubled assets. “We are not flipping a switch here,” said one official, calling for patience. “These are intricate programs.”
But the disputes over the stress tests, which have been administered to 19 big banks, and a lackluster reception to the third effort, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, are also potential worries.
Large banks are being put through a battery of tests to see whether they will hold up under pressure in the worst-case economic assumptions over the next two years. Big banks like Citigroup, Bank of America, PNC Financial and Wells Fargo are disputing some of the early findings, which suggest some banks may need to raise capital, according to people briefed on the exams. Because of the protracted negotiations with the banks and regulator infighting over how much information to disclose, officials now plan to announce the results on May 5 or 6, the third time the date has been postponed.
“There is concern among the banks that the stress test has led to uncertainty, the opposite of what is intended, and they would be diluting their shareholders based on a scenario that the regulators say themselves are unlikely to happen,” said Edward L. Yingling, the head of the American Bankers Association.
According to people briefed on the situation, the disputes center on several assumptions that regulators made in administering the tests. These include the severity of losses on assets like mortgages, credit card loans and commercial real estate loans, as well as the banks’ potential to generate earnings.
In a further challenge, the banks are also pushing regulators to relax the timetable for them to obtain new capital.
Some investors are prepared to buy problem assets from banks. What is less certain is whether banks will be willing to sell. Big money managers like BlackRock and Bank of New York Mellon said they had applied to raise money for the troubled-asset funds. While administration officials say they never expected every bank to participate, large banks whose involvement was regarded as vital to the plan’s success have said they will not be involved. Executives worry that whatever assurances the White House gives them, an angry Congress might impose new rules on banks that participate, particularly on pay.
Officials from Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial and a number of other big lenders that have received multibillion-dollar government bailouts are reluctant to participate or have refused so far to commit until more details are offered. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, has said he believes that the Public-Private Investment Program — which depends on loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — could be “good for the system” but that his bank has no intention of being either a seller or buyer. “We’re certainly not going to borrow from the federal government, because we’ve learned our lesson about that,” he said earlier this month in a conference about earnings.
Many banks are reluctant to sell their nonperforming loans because they could suffer big losses, forcing them to raise more capital. Others want to avoid the stigma of latching on to another federal program.
“Never mind the price,” James E. Rohr, PNC’s chief, said in a recent interview. “I wouldn’t want to be the first person and be perceived as a weak bank.”
D. Bryan Jordan, the chief executive of First Horizon, a big lender based in Tennessee, said the likelihood that his bank would participate was somewhat low. “We think we can get a lot more value out of them by working them out ourselves,” he said earlier this month in a conference call about first-quarter results.
Art Murton, an official at the F.D.I.C. who is helping to devise the troubled-loan program, said there had been “encouraging” levels of interest. To test the investor waters, the F.D.I.C. is planning a pilot auction in June.
The TALF program has also struck some as underwhelming. It was to ignite the market for securities backed by consumer and small-business loans, which dried up last year.
Policy makers said they planned to lend up to $1 trillion under the program. But investors took only $4.7 billion in loans in the first installment in March, and a further $1.7 billion in April, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Administration officials said, however, that the plan was restarting lending and would grow in coming months.
Citigroup, meanwhile, has been in discussions with the Treasury over overhauling its compensation system for traders and other employees, a person close to the talks said, as the bank awaits the government’s new compensation rules. Among the ideas discussed have been issuing warrants, permitting employees to buy stock rights at steep discounts and exempting traders from the new rules.
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