Prudential, AIG

Prudential requested an oral hearing after the council proposed designating it systemically important in June 2013. The hearing was held the following month, and the FSOC held its final vote to designate the insurer in September 2013. AIG and GE Capital didn’t request hearings.

MetLife, led by Chief Executive Officer Steven Kandarian, has insisted that it isn’t systemically important and wouldn’t pose a risk to the broader financial system even if it were to fail. The insurer didn’t take a bailout during the 2008 financial crisis.

Kandarian told investors June 10 that it was too early to know exactly what a systemic designation would mean for his company. Regulators “could still come up with draft rules that we would find reasonable or come up with draft rules that maybe we wouldn’t find as reasonable,” he said.

Republicans in Congress are proposing legislation that they say would increase the council’s transparency. The lawmakers say the FSOC should advise companies earlier when they are being discussed at council meetings.

At a June 24 hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, Lew asserted that the FSOC is transparent and said critics who call it opaque are “simply wrong.”

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