US regional banks eye SRT for M&A

Regional banks in the US are considering adding significant risk transfer techniques to their M&A arsenal, if not already actively deploying them in the context of takeovers, according to panelists speaking at the FT Live Risk Transfer conference 14 May. They would be following in the footsteps of banks in other countries that are said to have been using SRT to support merger activity for years. “Two years ago, you couldn't get a bank merger done,” said Matthew Bisanz, partner at Mayer Brown, speaking at the conference. “Now you have Webster and Santander, PNC and FirstBank. You have all these regional banks [including], Huntington's acquisition spree, who might have said before, ‘Ill do an SRT because it might turn my strategy around. It might help me deploy my capital more efficiently.” Proposing a merger, he said, is “a lot easier to explain to [a] board of directors than an SRT.”