U.S. Fed approves merger between BB&T, SunTrust Banks

Wed Nov 20 2019
Lucy Harlow (4100 articles)
U.S. Fed approves merger between BB&T, SunTrust Banks

 The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Tuesday it approved a merger between BB&T Corp and SunTrust Banks Inc, sealing the biggest tie-up of banks since the 2007-2009 global financial crisis.

Analysts have said such a tie-up has been made possible by regulatory easing under the administration of President Donald Trump, which has encouraged banking regulators to take a more relaxed approach to approving mergers, bank applications and enforcement of post-crisis rules.

The Fed said its approval was conditioned on several actions, including that BB&T must divest 30 branches and more than $ 2.4 billion in deposits to mitigate the competitive effects of the merger.

SunTrust must also satisfy the terms of a newly-issued consent order after the Fed found it had misled certain business customers regarding the operation and billing for some products.

In a statement, the companies said they were pleased to have received regulatory approval.

Lucy Harlow

Lucy Harlow

Lucy Harlow is a senior Correspondent who has been reporting about Commodities, Currencies, Bonds etc across the globe for last 10 years. She reports from New York and tracks daily movement of various indices across the Globe