June 22, 2010
“Volcker Rule” Would Limit Bank M&A
Last week, this Reuters article noted that a provision in the regulatory reform bill being negotiated by the House-Senate conference committee would limit deal activity of US banks. This so-called “Volcker Rule” is one of the provisions being hotly debated and it’s unknown in what form it will end up – but the Base Text would prohibit banks that engage in proprietary trading from merging if the liabilities of the resulting institution exceeded 10 percent of total US liabilities.