Community banks look to halt big bank mergers

Chris Cole, the group’s senior vice president and senior regulatory counsel, also argued that the proliferation of big banks is creating an unlevel playing field for smaller banks, as their access to funds and other resources is dwarfed.

Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, institutions that are deemed “systemically significant” — including banks with more than $50 billion in assets — are subjected to stricter regulation and oversight, in an attempt to prevent the large failures that threatened the entire financial system during the 2008 crisis.

But regulators still have not fleshed out exactly how they will go about handling such institutions, and Cole argued that a moratorium on big deals is needed until that is clarified.

The Capitol One-ING merger has also come under heat from community and consumer groups, who also levy the “too big to fail” charge. But Capital One has defended the deal, arguing it is a prudent institution that does not pose such a risk.