MetLife Wins Court Ruling Removing FSOC’s “Too-Big-to-Fail” Designation
On March 30, Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia invalidated the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (“FSOC”) designation of MetLife as a systemically important financial institution (“SIFI”). Although the court found that MetLife may be deemed “predominantly engaged” in “financial” activities and therefore eligible for designation as a SIFI, the court found “fundamental violations of administrative law” and a designation process that was “fatally flawed.” In particular, the court determined that FSOC did not follow its own published standards for SIFI-designation: it did not assess MetLife’s likelihood of failure, but simply assumed that a failure would occur, and never attempted to quantify or estimate the actual consequences of a failure to the financial system. In addition, FSOC failed to consider the costs associated with designating MetLife as a SIFI. Accordingly, the court determined that FSOC’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious,” and granted MetLife’s motion for summary judgment to rescind its SIFI designation.
Although the case was determined largely on procedural grounds, it highlights the continuing challenges regulators face in defining systemic risk on an empirically clear basis.