Feb. 26 (UPI) — Thirteen members of Congress have called on regulators to block a proposed merger between financial giants Capital One and Discover, saying the deal will be bad for consumers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and other members of Congress wrote and signed a letter urging the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve to block Capital One’s planned acquisition of Discover Financial Services in a $35 billion deal that had been expected to close late this year or early 2025.
The letter states that, if the proposed deal goes through, it will make Capital One the sixth largest bank in the United States and the country’s largest issuer of credit cards. And that will, in turn, “limit customer choice,” lawmakers said in endorsing the letter.
Joining Warren — a member of the Senate’s Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee — are 12 other lawmakers on the House side: U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Katie Porter, D-Calif.; James McGovern, D-Mass.; Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; Greg Casar, D-Tex.; Summer Lee, D-Penn.; Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.; Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Ill.; and Al Green, a Texas Democrat.
Signed Sunday, their letter noted that both Discover and Capital One — with $500 billion in assets — had “concerning track records” for consumers and that, in 2012, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had ordered Capital One to refund $140 million to 2 million customers “who were misled into paying for costly add-on products.”
“By acquiring Discover, Capital One would add a network of 305 million cardholders to its base of more than 100 million customers, consolidating the credit card market and limiting customer choice,” the letter reads.
JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called for the merger to happen.
“Let them compete,” Dimon said Monday on CNBC while he acknowledged that if the merger does happened as planned, it would mean Dimon’s JP Morgan Chase would no longer be the biggest credit card lender.
On Wednesday, Warren’s conservative colleague from Missouri, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, said on X he believed the merger “should be blocked” and suggested that Congress cap credit card rates “pronto.”
Hawley — Missouri’s former attorney general — stated that the merger “sounds like the credit card companies finding another way to screw the American people.”
