Legal Interpretations
Bank Holding Company/Change in Control - 2003 Letters
December 19, 2003
To Isaac B. Lustgarten, indicating provision of fleet management services to some non-leased vehicles is an activity incidental to the bank holding company’s authorized leasing activities, provided the bank holding company’s leasing subsidiary limits its fleet management services involving vehicles not subject to a Regulation Y permissible lease to no more than 15 percent of the fleet management revenues, and 5 percent of the total leasing revenues of the leasing subsidiary. 12 CFR 225.28(b)(3) n.5.
August 18, 2003
To National City corporation, granting an exception from the anti-tying prohibitions of section 106 of the Bank Holding Company Act Amendments of 1970 (12 U.S.C. § 1972). The exception permits National City's subsidiary banks ("Banks") to require borrowers whose loans from Banks are secured with publicly traded securities to keep those securities in accounts at a broker-dealer affiliate of National City, if the requirement is limited in scope and the accounts are subject to certain restrictions.
May 14, 2003
To Gregory J. Lyons in response to an inquiry on behalf of State Street Bank and Trust Company regarding the regulatory capital status of an indemnified agency securities lending program of the bank. Under State Street’s program, the bank, acting as agent, lends out securities of a client on a cash-collateralized basis and reinvests, on its client’s behalf, the cash collateral received from the securities borrower by lending it on a fully secured basis. The bank also indemnifies its client against the risk that the securities borrower would fail to return the lent securities and against the client’s reinvestment risk on the cash collateral. The letter permits State Street to compute its regulatory capital for these transactions by assigning the risk weight of the counterparty to the exposure amount of all such transactions with the counterparty. The bank must calculate the exposure amount as the sum of the bank’s current unsecured exposure on its portfolio of transactions with the counterparty plus an add-on for potential future exposure estimated using the bank’s internal VaR model.
February 6, 2003
Letter to H. Rodgin Cohen, Esq., stating that the Board would not find that a proposed investment by The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., New York, New York, in Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc., Tokyo, Japan, and proposed business relationships between the two companies would cause Goldman Sachs to control Sumitomo Mitsui for purposes of the Bank Holding Company Act.