Joe Adler

Those looking for clear winners and losers after the conference committee struck a historic final agreement early Friday on regulatory reform legislation are bound to be frustrated.

While several critical regulatory reform issues remained in limbo late Wednesday, House and Senate conferees agreed to several key provisions, including one allowing banks to pay interest on business checking accounts.

Lawmakers unexpectedly added an overhaul of the deposit insurance system to the final regulatory reform legislation on Tuesday, adding sweeping provisions that were not part of either the House or Senate revamp bills.

A fight is brewing over which agency should replace the soon-to-be-eliminated Office of Thrift Supervision on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. While the House regulatory reform bill would give that seat to the Federal Reserve Board, the Senate's version would assign it to the proposed consumer protection bureau.

Sen. Richard Durbin's interchange amendment specifies that the Federal Reserve Board would draw up regulations limiting debit fees, but many observers agree the new consumer protection regulator — not the Fed — could end up with the ultimate authority over the rules.

The battle over the final regulatory reform will just be a prologue to the longer and much more complicated fight over how the legislation will be implemented.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will take another stab at imposing checks on securitization. The agency is expected to issue another proposal that would restrict its safe harbor for securitized assets, five months after its first attempt, during which the Securities and Exchange Commission weighed in with a plan of its own.

Four small banks totaling $730 million in assets were closed late Friday on a relatively light evening for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Regulators may be more open to selling failed banks to nontraditional owners — or maybe there are just fewer buyers.