Capital cleanup, deposit franchise divergence and merger timing

BCB Bancorp chose dilution and loan sales for cleanup. The company plans to sell 12.65 million shares, dispose of $210 million of commercial loans and reclassify $96 million of loans as available-for-sale, with an expected third-quarter loss of $126.2 million to $136.1 million.

Gateway First Bancorp agreed to buy First Western Mortgage and Colonial Savings. The $2.1 billion-asset Gateway First plans to buy First Western Mortgage and its $502 million-asset Fort Worth bank unit, Colonial Savings, in the first quarter; the price was undisclosed.

SoFi Bank entered the top 50 by deposits. SoFi Bank had $46.8 billion of deposits at June 30, ranked 47th in the FDIC Summary of Deposits and became the first fintech-rooted bank in the top 50.

The Bancorp faces Chime concentration risk. Chime represented about 8% of The Bancorp's second-quarter revenue, its contract runs until mid-2028 and requires years' notice to exit, while a vast majority of The Bancorp's deposits come from banking-as-a-service partnerships.

Fed preserved stress capital buffers after large-bank stress test. All 32 tested banks remained above minimum common equity tier 1 requirements under a severe scenario that included a 39% drop in commercial real estate prices, a 30% drop in house prices and 10% peak unemployment; aggregate capital fell 1.6 percentage points after more than $708 billion of modeled loan losses, and current capital requirements remain in place until 2027.

Main Street bill and FDIC proposals target capital, supervision and M&A timing. The Main Street Capital Access Act passed the House 270-155 and now heads to the Senate; it would give de novo institutions a three-year capital phase-in, require 90-day decisions on bank merger and acquisition applications, and require regulators to consider risk profile and business model in rules and supervisory decisions. The FDIC separately proposed a merger-review process that could allow some acquisitions to be processed in as few as five days, plus a parity rule for state-chartered and national banks.

ABA and five bank groups say revised CLARITY still leaves an interest-like stablecoin rewards loophole. The Senate's July 22 revision left the stablecoin yield provision unchanged from the Senate Banking Committee version, and the groups argue issuers could use rewards to pull deposits from banks that fund small-business, mortgage and farm loans; banks had sought a circuit breaker to halt interest payments if deposit flight accelerated.