Federal Reserve’s Powell backs Basel changes, says no date yet for publishing new draft

By Michael S. Derby and Michelle Price

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell endorsed an overhaul of the contentious Basel bank capital rules on Wednesday, but said he did not know when regulators would formally bless the new draft and that he hoped it would be finalized by the first half of 2025.

The central bank’s regulatory chief Michael Barr last week outlined a plan to significantly ease a July 2023 proposal raising bank capital following intense opposition from Wall Street banks who said it would hurt lending and the economy.

The new draft would increase big bank capital 9% compared with around 20% in the previous draft.

The Fed board must vote on the new draft before it can be published for public feedback. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which are working on the rule with the Fed, must also approve the new draft, but the agencies have not said when they plan to do that.

Speaking at a press conference after the latest Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Wednesday, Powell said the changes outlined by Barr happened “with my support and with my involvement” but that the central bank did not yet have a date for re-proposing the new draft.

“The idea is that we will move as a group to put this again out for comment…and we’ll try to bring this to a conclusion sometime in the first half of next year.”

Powell’s comments were the first acknowledgement by the central bank that the timing of the re-proposal is still unclear and that work on the rules will stretch past the Nov. 5 election and into a new administration.

Analysts and industry sources have said that that could put them at risk of being further watered down or shelved altogether if Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has pledged to ease burdensome rules, wins back the White House, Reuters previously reported.