Bank Holding Company Lobbying Activity upon Regulation and Its Impact upon Non-Traditional Revenue

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bank holding companies exert influence at every step of the legislative and regulatory processes. In our article, we ask if banks frequently comment upon proposed financial rulings with the goal of favorable regulatory change. We explore whether bank lobbying leads to having their opinions worded into the final form of the regulation. By making use of an original collection of political and financial quarterly panel data, we find that banks use multiple mechanisms of influence while lobbying regulatory agencies. This is important since banks lobby to preserve gains in non-traditional revenues.