Federal Reserve Waters Down Plan To Hike Capital Requirements For Big Banks Amid Wall Street Lobbying Efforts

The Federal Reserve Board’s Vice Chair for Supervision, Michael Barr, announced on Tuesday in a speech that the Fed was watering down a proposed regulation hiking the amount of cash large banks must keep on hand amid intense Wall Street lobbying efforts.

Federal regulators are amending the Basel III endgame proposal that would have raised the reserve requirement for banks holding $250 billion or more in assets by 20% to a much smaller increase of 9%, according to Barr’s speech. The debate over Basel III brought droves of Wall Street lobbyists to Washington, with 486 federal lobbyists operating in D.C. on behalf of banks with $50 billion or more in assets as well as seven banking trade groups as of the end of 2023 — the most big bank lobbyists in the nation’s capital since the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2009.

“We have spoken with a wide range of stakeholders, including banks, academics, public interest groups, consumers, businesses, other regulators, Congress, and others,” Barr said of the Basel III endgame revision process in the speech. “This process has led us to conclude that broad and material changes to the proposals are warranted.”

The cash reserve requirement increase was intended to prevent panic and consequent bank runs among depositors, but large banks argued additional reserves were unnecessary and would hurt everyday Americans by tightening credit constraints and increasing borrowing costs.