Insights: Financials

Bank Capital/Liquidity

Secretary Bessent gave a speech this week in which he indicated Treasury plans to play a central role in re-shaping financial regulation. He outlined his views generally and signaled direction on a number of issues, including Basel III, SLR, and stress tests/SCB. Bessent’s speech builds on Trump’s comment that, “The Fed has done a terrible job...

Energy, Financials, Healthcare, Macro, Tech / Media / Telecom

Senate Republicans are this week planning to begin consideration of a joint budget resolution that will eventually get adopted by the House as well. It appears Republicans are preparing to forgo the typical process for agreeing in the context of the budget resolution on the basic parameters of how they’ll achieve spending cuts, and will wait...

Energy, Financials, Healthcare, Macro, Tech / Media / Telecom

Senate Republicans continue to deliberate over the major issues associated with a single, broad-based budget resolution that allows for large-scale tax cuts and spending reductions, as was passed by the House and endorsed by President Trump (versus the narrower Senate-passed version that just focuses on border and defense spending). House...

Financials, Mergers & Acquisitions

Capital One/Discover

Going into the end of last week, it appeared that the Capital One/Discover deal would be subject to the more permissive bank M&A regulatory framework that we expect the Trump administration to pursue in the coming years. In fact, the CFPB dropped its lawsuit against Capital One, which suggested the Trump administration was inclined to look at the...

Last week, the FDIC voted to overturn the bank merger guidelines issued last year under the Biden administration and to revert to the prior standards. Separately, Senate Republicans are reportedly planning to soon vote on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would terminate the OCC’s bank merger guidelines, which were also finalized...

Crypto (Stablecoins, Market structure)

In addition to the strong commitment President Trump has made to facilitating a supportive regulatory environment for crypto, Congressional Republicans have begun to move quickly on legislation in this area, and have set expectations that this is their top priority for financial services policy and that a bill will be enacted into law. They have...