The Clock Is Ticking For Large Bank M&A

The race to get large bank deals done during the current presidential administration has gotten more intense.

During Tuesday’s midterm elections, Democrats had a good night and will retake control of both the House and the Senate come January. The results renewed concerns about a Democratic administration potentially taking the White House in the November 2028 election and making it more difficult to complete bank M&A. That means any regional banks looking at acquisitions will likely want to get that completed before then.

“I think the industry is on the clock,” says Brian Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at financial services firm Stifel Financial Corp. “I think the election results are a potential signal of a power shift to come at the White House and the banking agencies. Banks have to factor in that the environment won’t be as benign as it has been the last two years.”

The Biden administration was generally more opposed to large bank consolidation. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in July 2021 that directed the federal banking regulators to boost scrutiny of bank mergers. That had a chilling effect on large bank deals. From 2022 to 2024, no deals were announced that involved a buyer with more than $100 billion in assets, according to a presentation by investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

However, that has shifted during President Donald Trump’s second term in office. In 2025, there were four deals announced involving banks with at least $100 million in assets, according to the KBW presentation. The median size of a deal in 2025 was $177 million, up from $80 million in 2024, according to data from investment bank Piper Sandler Cos.

Regulatory approval times have sped up as well. Last year, the average number of days to close an acquisition was 177, down from 213 in 2024, according to a presentation from law firm Alston & Bird during Bank Director’s 2026 C-Suite Summit.

Any transactions that are still pending come the next presidential election risk either languishing with a longer approval time or not being approved at all, Gardner says. “For large and regional banks, there should be an increased urgency to get any deals done now,” says Jeff Davis, managing director of the financial institutions group at Mercer Capital, a financial services consulting firm. “Among regional and superregional banks, the window is tightening up.”

Greyson Tuck, president of the law firm Gerrish Smith Tuck, points to TD Bank Group’s scuttled plans to buy $80.7 billion First Horizon Corp. in Memphis, Tennessee, as an example of what the industry is likely weighing right now when considering M&A. That deal was first announced in February 2022 but called off in May 2023 due to issues with getting regulatory approval. “That is a deal that probably would have gotten approval under the Trump administration,” he adds. “It’s an example of how a change in administration can affect M&A.”

However, these concerns may be mostly contained to larger bank M&A. In general, smaller banks have an easier time getting regulatory approval, even under the stricter Biden administration, Tuck says.

Additionally, a strong stock market usually makes M&A easier. Davis notes that bank stocks have been relatively strong this year and were up on Wednesday after the election. By Wednesday afternoon, the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index was up more than 2% for the day and 6% for the year to date. He says that indicates equity investors “aren’t too worried” about the election’s results, which could make it easier to reach acquisition agreements.

Besides M&A, the banking industry is bracing for several other issues to bubble to the surface. Given that Trump still holds veto power, any legislation passed would require some level of bipartisan cooperation. There are some bills that affect banking that could thread this needle. For instance, there is the bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act, which would require large banks to provide more choices in payment networks used for card transactions. The hope is that this would bring down the cost of interchange fees. There has also been proposed legislation to cap credit card interest rates, an issue that Trump has supported.

Finally, it is widely expected that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., will chair the Senate Banking Committee, and that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., will lead the House Financial Services Committee. That will give Democrats the ability to call hearings and question the heads of the regulatory agencies and bank executives.

Cryptocurrency firms are likely to be one target, especially in light of the recent $6.3 billion cybersecurity breach at Binance. “Crypto has gotten an enormous boost from Trump over the last two years because there has been no effective oversight,” says Cornelius Hurley, a lecturer at the Boston University School of Law. “But now there will be.”

The issue of so-called political debanking could be another area that the Democrats tackle. Trump has claimed that the financial services industry has targeted conservative consumers and businesses by closing their accounts and denying other banking services. In October, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a report exploring this issue after reviewing more than 100,000 complaints. Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said in a press release that the report contained “irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses.”

But Democrats could now push back on this narrative and focus the conversation instead on how banking regulations are being politicized and banks are being forced to do business with companies they would rather avoid, Hurley says. “I expect Democrats will be looking at that very skeptically,” he adds.