| On Fifth Third Bid for
Comerica CRA Protested 53 Said
Filing Florida But Agency Has
Nothing
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.
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.
On November 12
Florida wrote back: "A search
reveals no records responsive
to the request in the records
of the Office of Financial
Regulation(OFR).
OFR has not received any
notices with respect to the
transaction." We'll have
more on this - and on the Fed,
which just granted expedited
treatment to Inner City Press'
FOIA request for their
questions to Fifth Third.
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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