U.S. Bank CEOs to appear before Congress

This week, lawmakers will question the chief executives of JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and other significant U.S. retail banks about a wide range of topics, including the state of the economy and their positions on contentious matters like abortion and fossil fuel lending.

According to bank officials, congressional aides, and lobbyists, the CEOs’ testimony before the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committees on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, is also anticipated to cover payments fraud, increasing diversity, mergers, and access to bank branches.

The CEOs of the four biggest U.S. banks are on the list: Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Jane Fraser of Citi, and Charles Scharf of Wells Fargo. They will be joined by the chief executives of the biggest regional lenders in the nation, USBancorp’s Andy Cecere, PNC Financial’s William Demchak, and Truist Financial’s William Rogers.

Even while such hearings rarely result in legislative action, they are nonetheless dangerous for CEOs since they will have to defend their banks on a number of fronts when parliamentarians are trying to raise their profiles before the November elections.

Last year, during a hearing of a similar nature, Dimon and Senator Elizabeth Warren of the Democratic Party got into an argument about overdraft fees. Tim Sloan, the former CEO of Wells Fargo, abruptly left his position in March 2019, two weeks after he stumbled during a House committee hearing regarding the bank’s efforts to address its regulatory issues.

The hearing takes place amid mounting concerns that rate increases by the Federal Reserve intended to combat inflation could push the nation into a recession. The U.S. economy was facing a “hurricane” according to Jamie Dimon in June, but he did not know how catastrophic it would be.