Executive Orders Target FDIC and FSOC Powers; MetLife Seeks Delay on SIFI Appeal Ruling

President Trump recently ordered a 180-day review of two key Dodd-Frank regulations and asked the Treasury Department to not invoke their powers related to those regulations. The Wall Street Journal reports that the executive orders target provisions that authorize FDIC to oversee the liquidation of a failing financial firm and another empowering FSOC to designate firms as systematically important financial institutions. After the executive order was announced MetLife asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to delay a ruling on its designation as a systematically important financial institution. FSOC designated MetLife as being systemically important in December 2014 but MetLife challenged that decision in federal court and in March 2016 a U.S. District Court judge rescinded FSOC’s designation of the company. The government appealed that decision and the case is now under consideration with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The presidential orders come amid an approaching vote on House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s Financial CHOICE Act of 2017, which among other things would repeal the government’s authority to designate firms as systematically important and reduce some regulatory burdens on banks, among other initiatives. A Bloomberg report notes that some opponents to the Financial CHOICE Act are gearing up to propose an amendment to the bill that would separate consumer lending from investment banking.