BLBG: Obama to Meet Citigroup, Goldman, 10 Other Banks on Lending
By Nicholas Johnston and Hans Nicholas
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Executives from 12 banks, including Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., will participate in a Dec. 14 White House meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss his proposals to boost small- business lending and overhaul industry regulations, an administration official said.
Also represented will be Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Company, Capital One Financial Corp. and American Express Co., said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Rounding out the guest list are executives from Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., U.S. Bancorp and State Street Corp., the official said.
White House senior advisory Valerie Jarrett said Dec. 8 the executives were invited to talk “about what we can do together to increase lending, particularly to small businesses.”
In an interview, she said “we want to talk about what we can do collectively to work with them to solve this credit crunch.”
The administration official said yesterday another meeting would be held with the chiefs of smaller banks in the near future.
The session follows the jobs summit Obama hosted on Dec. 3 and his speech Dec. 8 in Washington where he focused on how to spur jobs growth by aiding small businesses.
Obama said in his speech that he wants to use some of the remaining money in the Troubled Asset Relief Program “to facilitate lending to small businesses.”
The $700 billion TARP fund was authorized by Congress last year to bail out banks amid the global financial crisis. The Treasury this week said the program would probably end up costing $200 billion less than its August estimate of $341 billion.
Obama in March convened chief executives from financial institutions including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America at the White House as he was pushing for support for revamping financial regulations.
To contact the reporters on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington at njohnston3@bloomberg.net; Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net
