What a yes vote endorsed
Failing Bank Acquisition Fairness Act
What this does
The bill narrows the exceptions that let a bank exceed federal deposit and liability concentration limits when it acquires a failing bank. Under current law a regulator can waive those limits for a merger involving a bank in default or in danger of default; the bill permits a waiver only on clear and convincing evidence that the merger is necessary to prevent significant economic disruption or significant adverse effects on financial stability, and only when no qualified bid exists from a bidder that is well capitalized, well managed, and not itself over the cap. It requires the waiving agency and the FDIC to report each waiver to the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees within 30 days and to post the report publicly, subject to redactions. It bars the FDIC from counting a bid that would breach those limits when it decides the least costly way to resolve a failed bank. It also reduces the Federal Reserve's discretionary surplus fund by $2 million, effective September 1, 2036.
Passed the House by voice vote
How we know · 9 sourced claims
- The bill narrows the exceptions that let a bank exceed federal deposit and liability concentration limits when it acquires a failing bank.Source: Sec. 2
- Under current law a regulator can waive those concentration limits for a merger involving a bank in default or in danger of default.Source: Sec. 2(a)
- The bill permits such a waiver only on clear and convincing evidence that the merger is necessary to prevent significant economic disruption or significant adverse effects on financial stability.Source: Sec. 2(a)
- The waiver is available only when the agency has received no qualified bid from a bidder that is not subject to the concentration prohibition, with qualified bid defined as one that is well capitalized and well managed.Source: Sec. 2(a) (18(c)(13)(C))
- The bill covers both deposit concentration limits and the consolidated-liability concentration limit.Source: Sec. 2(b)
- The waiving agency and the FDIC must jointly report each waiver to the House Committee on Financial Services and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs within 30 days.Source: Sec. 3(a)
- The report must be made publicly available on the agencies' websites, subject to redactions for confidential supervisory information.Source: Sec. 3(b)
- The FDIC may not count a bid that would violate the concentration limits when determining the least costly resolution of a failed bank.Source: Sec. 4
- The bill reduces the Federal Reserve's discretionary surplus fund by $2 million, effective September 1, 2036.Source: Sec. 5
Reported lobbying
At least
2
organizations named this measure in a lobbying filing.
A floor, not a total. Those organizations were counted by the client name on 4 quarterly reports filed by 2 registered lobbying firms in 2025 Q4, 2026 Q1 and 2026 Q2. The disclosure form takes a free text description of the issue, so an organization that lobbied this measure without naming it is not counted here.
The filings record that lobbying was reported on the measure. They carry no per-bill dollar figure and no position, so nothing here says how much was spent or which side an organization took.
The organizations named
- INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY BANKERS OF AMERICA
- AMERICANS FOR FINANCIAL REFORM
Listed as filed. They are every client name on the filings counted here.
From the LD-2 quarterly lobbying filings published at lda.gov by the Senate Office of Public Records. Read for 2025 Q1, 2025 Q2, 2025 Q3, 2025 Q4, 2026 Q1 and 2026 Q2. The pull came up 2 short in 2025 Q4 and 7 short in 2026 Q2 against the register's own count, so those quarters are the filings posted rather than every one filed. 2026 Q3 is still inside its filing window, so that quarter is only the filings posted so far.