I spoke with Zoe Sagalow at S&P Global Market Intelligence on the suspension of Toronto-Dominion Bank’s acquisiton of First Horizon Corp., explaining how these processes work from a regulatory perspective.
From the article:
Regulators generally request a suspension-of-processing letter when they do not have the necessary information to make a timely decision on an application, industry experts told Market Intelligence.
Regulators commonly request this when they have issues they cannot resolve within their deadlines, said William Isaac, chairman of Secura/Isaac Group LLC and former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. If an agency is still seeking information needed for consideration and is approaching the statutory deadline for making a decision on an application, they can either ask the banks for an extension or deny the application, Isaac said.
“I don’t think the regulator was ready to deny the application, but they also were not ready to approve it,” Isaac said in an interview. “There’s a statutory clock that’s ticking, and they called the banks and said, ‘What do you want us to do? Do you want us to deny it, or are you going to withdraw it?'”
You can read the full article here.