U.S. President Donald Trump is reviewing a possible breakup of large U.S. banks, according to a published interview on Monday.
Mr. Trump told Bloomberg News that he was considering a ‘21st century’ version of the 1933 Glass-Steagall law that separated consumer lending and investment banking and was repealed in 1999 by President Bill Clinton.
“I’m looking at that right now,” Mr. Trump said in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg. “There’s some people that want to go back to the old system, right? So we’re going to look at that.”
Mr. Trump's comments are his first on the subject and follow other statements from administration officials such as National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressing broad support for the idea.
Details not known
Several liberal Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders, have also supported a breakup of the biggest banks.
However, the Trump administration has not released details about what an eventual breakup plan might look like.
Shares of large banks gave up some of their gains following the Bloomberg report, but stayed in positive territory. Around 1730 GMT, JPMorgan Chase was up 0.6% at $87.46, Citigroup was up 0.8% at $59.61 and Bank of America was up 1.2% at $23.61.
