Banking Law Committee Journal - Fall 2019

Business & Corporate

Banking Law Committee Journal Team

Banking Law Committee Journal Board

Business & Corporate

Upcoming Banking Law Committee Events

Banking Law Committee Standalone Meeting, January 16 - 18, 2020, Washington, DC Business Law Section Spring Meeting, March 25-28, 2020, Boston, MA Business Law Section Annual Meeting, September 9-12, 2020, Chicago, IL

Business & Corporate

Volcker Rule 2.0: An Overview of Recent Changes and Preview of What’s to Come

Zachary L. Baum and Julia A. Knight

As of October 8, 2019, the five agencies responsible for administering the Volcker Rule– the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – have approved a final rule that revises aspects of the Volcker Rule implementing regulations. Below, we highlight some of the final rule’s most significant changes in the areas of proprietary trading, compliance programs, metrics reporting and covered funds.

Business & Corporate

The Value of a Bank Holding Company

Joseph E. Silva

Is the bank holding company structure obsolete or unnecessary? Some might believe that to be the case, but there are a number of reasons why banks should consider maintaining, or even enhancing the use of their holding companies. Most obvious among these reasons to resist eliminating the holding company is the flexibility to grow, diversify, and innovate offered by the bank holding company structure. This is also the same reasoning used to examine the potential benefits of establishing a bank holding company for a bank that does not currently have one.

Business & Corporate

The Transition From LIBOR: A Report at the Halfway Mark

Howard S. Altarescu, Nikiforos Mathews, Andrew J. Morris

It has been more than two years since the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority announced that after the end of 2021, it will not compel any banks to provide quotations upon which LIBOR is based. This announcement gave the markets notice that by that date, all financial products linked to LIBOR—a reported $350 trillion worth—should be migrated to alternative reference rates. This is a mammoth transition project for the financial markets, and some progress has been made—a likely LIBOR successor for U.S. dollars has been identified, and U.S. banks have begun assessing their LIBOR exposures—but an enormous amount of work remains to be done. The transition has many moving parts, each of them presenting potential legal risk.

Business & Corporate

Leasing Challenges In The Canadian Bank Regime

John Teolis

The purpose of this article is to describe these limitations on the banks. In this regard, the restrictions apply not only to the domestic banks, but also, based on the “level playing field” principle to the effect that whatever restrictions are imposed on a Canadian bank should also be imposed on a foreign bank, the rules apply equally to the foreign banks that carry on business in Canada.