Waters to aim at 2 banking giants as head of committee

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Maxine Waters plans to zero in on two big banks -- Wells Fargo & Co. and Deutsche Bank -- when she becomes head of the powerful House Financial Services Committee.

The representative from Los Angeles, now the committee's top Democrat, is widely expected to gain the gavel after her party won control of the House in last week's elections. While Waters has outlined a wide-ranging agenda, she said her focus on bank oversight will target two large institutions she has been tangling with for a while -- including one, Deutsche Bank, that spills into her bitter feud with President Donald Trump.

"With Trump in the White House, I know that our fight for America's consumers and investors will continue to be challenging. But I am more than up to that fight," Waters wrote in a letter last week to her Democratic colleagues on the committee that was obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, the large German financial institution that has had a long relationship with Trump, were the only two banks specifically mentioned in the eight-page letter, which was first reported by Bloomberg.

Waters told the Times that looking into the continued problems at Wells Fargo would be a priority, declaring that "something is terribly wrong" at the San Francisco bank.

Waters had pushed Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, the outgoing House Financial Services Committee chairman, to hold a hearing on Wells Fargo's unauthorized account scandal in September 2016 after the bank agreed to pay $185 million to settle investigations into the matter.

At the hearing, Waters told then-Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf that she believed the bank was too big to manage and called for it to be broken up. Additional controversies have hit Wells Fargo since then, including consumer abuses involving its mortgage and auto-loan businesses that drew a record $1 billion fine from federal regulators in April. Earlier in the year, the Federal Reserve had ordered the bank to stop growing until it could prove to regulators that it has systems in place to prevent consumer abuses.

Wells Fargo said Monday that it "remains committed to working with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Congresswoman Waters."

"Our priority is to continue sharing the progress that we have made to transform our company, make things right with customers, and give back to our communities," said spokesman Jennifer Dunn.

Waters, one of Trump's fiercest critics, has said her agenda "cannot be totally focused on the president or anybody." And in her letter to colleagues, Waters outlined a host of priorities, including protecting consumers from abusive financial practices, expanding affordable housing opportunities, combating homelessness and strengthening the housing finance system.

But Waters also told her colleagues she planned to look into Trump's finances.

Business on 11/13/2018

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