US banking regulators want to make emergency fire sales of large regional banks a thing of the past by requiring lenders to come up with “living wills” that would make it easier to wind down a troubled institution.
Banks with more than $100bn in assets would be required to submit much more detailed resolution plans and required to raise new unsecured debt that could be used to recapitalise a failed bank, Martin Gruenberg, chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said on Monday.
The watchdog is responding to the failure this spring of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic, which were all seized, shut down and sold to larger lenders at a big loss to the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund.