A merger between a San Francisco bank and a Cincinnati bank that will result in a combined institution holding nearly $680 billion in assets has been given a conditional green light by the national bank regulator, the agency said Friday.
According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the merger of MUFG Union Bank, of San Francisco, into U.S. Bank of Cincinnati, was approved following “consideration of numerous public comments submitted in writing and expressed during a public meeting conducted on March 8, 2022.”
In addition to the expected $679.6 billion in combined assets, U.S. Bank will also hold $51.6 billion in capital because of the combination, the OCC said.
However, the OCC said, its approval of U.S. Bank’s application is conditioned upon, among other things, the bank’s “identification of its business lines and portfolios that could be sold quickly in the event of stress and a plan to effectuate that separability.”
(The Federal Reserve also announced its blessing of the merger in its role as regulator of U.S. Bank’s parent company, U.S. Bancorp of Minneapolis. The Fed said it gave the approval to the firm after it “committed to provide the Board and the FDIC with an interim update to its resolution plan reflecting the combined organization, and implementation plans related to heightened prudential standards.”)
The merger will have little impact on the position of U.S. Bank among the nation’s largest: before the merger, the bank was fifth on the list of banks ranked by total assets. It will remain in that position following the merger (following Citibank with $1.7 trillion).