Leveling the Playing Field Between Savings and Loan Holding Companies and Banks (H.R. 1334)
Do you support or oppose this bill?
What is H.R. 1334?
(Updated July 13, 2017)
This bill would set new thresholds to determine whether or not savings and loan holding companies have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Specifically, the bill would change the number of shareholders of record (i.e. how many people who have their names on the books or have stocks in the company at a particular time) that must be in place for the SEC to:
- Require that a security of the holding company be registered;
- Suspend the registration of a security issued by a holding company; and
- Suspend certain reporting requirements for a holding company.
- Its assets exceed $10 million.
- It has a class of equity security (like stocks) held by 2,000 or more people.
The registration would be terminated if a savings and loan holding company certifies that its holders of record have been reduced to fewer than 1,200 people.
Supplementary and periodic information filing responsibilities would also be suspended automatically if the securities of each class that the registration covers are held by fewer than 1,200 people.
Argument in favor
This corrects a mistake from legislation that was signed into law in 2012. It ensures that banks and savings and loan holding companies are playing by the same rules.
Argument opposed
There’s only about 600 saving and loan holding companies that this loophole applies to, and they’re all relatively small — why do they deserve special attention?
Impact
Savings and Loan Holding Companies, their employees, holders of record, and the SEC.
Cost of H.R. 1334
A CBO cost estimate found that this bill would not significantly impact federal spending.
Additional Info
In-Depth: The legislation that included the mistake requiring this fix — the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) — was signed into law by President Obama on April 5, 2012. That bill allowed banks to avoid the costs associated with registering with the SEC if they had a relatively small number of shareholders, but didn’t cover savings and loan holding companies.
A similar legislative fix was passed by the House on a 417 to 4 vote in January 2014, but the Senate did not consider the legislation before the 113th Congress concluded.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) sponsored this legislation, and said after introducing it
that he is:
“Proud to lead the bipartisan effort to grant our nation’s 600 small savings and loan holding companies the same flexibility afforded to bank and bank holding companies so they can better serve their communities to enable job creation and economic growth.”
This legislation was passed by the House Financial Services Committee by an overwhelming margin of 60 to 0.
Media:
- Sponsoring Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) Press Release
- CBO Cost Estimate
- House Financial Services Committee Press Release
- American Bankers Association (Previous Version - In Favor)
(Photo Credit: "WinonaSavingsBankVault" by Jonathunder - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)
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