Analysts have said such a tie-up has been made possible by regulatory easing under the administration of President Donald Trump, which has encouraged banking regulators to take a more relaxed approach to approving mergers, bank applications and enforcement of post-crisis rules.
The Fed said its approval was conditioned on several actions, including that BB&T must divest 30 branches and more than $2.4 billion in deposits to mitigate the competitive effects of the merger. SunTrust must also satisfy the terms of a newly-issued consent order after the Fed found it had misled certain business customers regarding the operation and billing for some products.Reporting by Katanga Johnson; Editing by Chris Reese and Tom Brown