The OCC Blesses a Buccaneer Bank
In a column last week, Bloomberg’s Matt Levine rightly observed that only a bank can usually buy another bank. He thus went on to say that a SPAC named Porticoes ambitions to buy a bank are doomed because Porticoes isn’t a bank. Here, he’s wrong – Porticoes in fact was allowed last December to become a unique form of national bank licensed to engage in what is often, if unkindly, called vulture capitalism. This is another OCC charter of convenience atop its approvals leading to NYCB’s woes, and thus yet another contradiction between the agency’s stern warnings on risk when it pops up in existing charters versus its insouciance when it comes to new or novel applications.