bank holding company
- noun
- /bæŋk ˈhoʊldɪŋ ˈkʌmpəni/
- Specialized
- The Volcker rule prohibits large bank holding companies from engaging in proprietary trading.
- a large bank holding company
Examples
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Randolph Lerner, who chairs the bank holding company MBNA Corporation, has suggested that the United States needs a homeland security framework that resembles the organizational protocols and functions of the Federal Reserve System.
Academic text (2004) -
As a bank holding company, it provides financial services to its subsidiaries, including commercial banking.
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Bank of America is the largest bank holding company in the United States by assets and the second largest bank by market capitalization.
Blog text (16) -
There are 23 bank-holding companies in the U.S. with more than $100 billion in assets, according to Federal Reserve data.
Blog text (3) -
Omni National Bank is a subsidiary of Omni Financial Services, Inc., a publicly traded bank holding company.
Blog text (10) -
Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs fully transitioned to bank holding companies to gain access to TARP funds.
Blog text (21) -
A good example is Capital One Financial (COF), the bank-holding company and credit-card lender that got slammed in the financial crisis.
Blog text (17) -
Many investors are interested in acquiring shares of a bank holding company for better returns.
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The bank holding company announced its intention to expand by acquiring smaller regional banks.
Synonyms
A company that owns enough shares to control other companies
A company that owns and controls more than one bank
How Big
- Specialized
- Specialized
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is straightforwardly compositional: a 'company' that 'holds' or controls one or more 'bank(s)'. This noun-compound follows standard English compound/attributive patterns (and has direct parallels in other languages), so a B1 learner who knows the three constituent words should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Bank holding company comes from the image of one firm holding banks like objects. The word 'holding' here means 'owning or controlling', so it describes a company that owns or controls one or more banks.