| On Fifth Third Bid for
Comerica Media Reruns Spin on
Huntington Amid CRA Protests 5
States
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
SDNY/SOUTH
BRONX, Nov 12 – As US
bank regulators loosen rules -
including the FDIC moving to
eliminate public comment
altogether on branch expansion
applications - now more big
banks are moving to get
bigger.
On
October 6, Fifth Third
announced it will apply to buy
damaged Comerica Bank. On
October 8-9, it was opposed,
to the Fed and OCC. Now on
November 10, after a
contemptuous response by Fifth
Third's Kala Gibson, the fight
has spread to five more
states.
Meanwhile,
how does today's business
media work, or not work? On
November 12 a pro-business
consultancy based in
Minneapolis put out a gushing
press release entitled "Fifth
Third’s Comerica Acquisition
Unseats Top 10 Bank
Competitors in Small Business
and Middle Market," saying
that Huntington had First
Citizens (both proposing
acquisitions) have been pushed
out of the top 10. FOX 4 in
Kansas City re-ran the press
release, without change,
presumably as "news," here
And so it goes - that's where
Inner City Press comes on, on
this beat.
Fifth
Third's EVP of "Corporate
Responsibility" Kala Gibson
wrote in urging a rubber stamp
from the Federal Reserve Bank
of Cleveland, saying that HMDA
data proves nothing. He is
speaking for CEO Tim Spence,
who bragged on the day of
announcement how fast he could
obtain an approval. Well let's
see.
Their
application to the Fed
discloses five states they are
filing with: Michigan, Texas,
California, Florida and
Arizona. On November 10 Inner
City Press filed with all
five.
Fair
Finance Watch filed:
Fair
Finance Watch has long been
concerned about Fifth
Third. Fair Finance
Watch has reviewed the
just-released 2024 Home
Mortgage Disclosure Act data
of Fifth Third, not reviewed
in any Community Reinvestment
Act performance
evaluation.
In state
after state, Fifth Third for
African Americans has (many)
more denials than
originations, while the
opposite is true for white
borrows. The pattern is
striking, starting with two
states Fifth Third and
Comerica overlap
in:
In
Michigan, the state Comerica
abandoned for Texas, Fifth
Third in 2024 denied 249
applications from African
Americans while making fewer,
only 177loans - while it made
fully 4189 loans to whites and
denied only 1688 applications.
This is disparate [there
are more states]
***
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