Banking Law

Banks are given specific and special powers in light of their roles assisting governments, entities, individuals and communities, and enjoy specific benefits such as access to deposits that the FDIC or credit union insurance funds insure. The availability of deposit insurance also empowers regulators to control risks that banks may take with insured deposits and has generated many of the limitations on bank powers of the past and today.

This course surveys a wide range of laws applicable to corporations chartered specifically as banks by federal or state agencies, and, to a much lesser extent, to those operating as chartered savings and loan associations or thrifts, and credit unions. It covers chartering, branching, powers, preemption, antitrust considerations specific to acquisitions by banks and bank holding companies, and limitations on the types of entities that banks may own and invest in or that bank and thrift holding companies may own or invest in. The course introduces basics of administrative law.

The course covers hot topics economic sanctions against the Ukraine, and the nascent regulation of math-based currencies as well as the basics mentioned above. It will introduce some anti-money laundering principles and financial privacy.

This course is fun partly because it is so different from other courses, and with any luck, it will be populated by a healthy mix of students from the US and from the grad programs, and even a joint law-Kelley or law-SPEA student to bring a moderately different perspective to classroom discussion.

The final examination will be an in-class exercise with two or three questions containing a mix of law and policy issues. Students who have taken this class have tended to do well.

Students enrolling should send Professor Hughes a two-paragraph statement in November that explains their background, and what they hope to achieve from this course.

The instructor often focuses this course on hot topics as well as mainstays of banking and fin. services regulation. This year, for example, hot topics include whether and how fintech companies should be regulated, whether portions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2011 went too far/ were too burdensome, whether we should break up the largest banks. Or whether the pre-1999 separation of banking, securities, and insurance should be restored.