U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged big U.S. banks to participate in a program aimed at helping small women- and minority-owned banks win contracts with the government agency, Bloomberg News reported Sept. 6, citing a letter it viewed.
A Trump administration official verified the contents of the letter, the news service said.
Recipients of the letter include Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and American Express Co. Mnuchin holds monthly meetings with the team responsible for the program, Bloomberg reported.
The Financial Agent Mentor-Protege Program is targeted at banks with less than $2 billion in assets and aims to have them be financial agents for the Treasury Department, according to the government agency's website. Big banks who have participated in the program include JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. JPMorgan in April said it will mentor two black-owned banks, Baltimore-based Harbor Bank of Maryland and New Orleans-based Liberty Bank and Trust Co., in the program.
Citi was the first big bank to be part of the program. Citi included Washington, D.C.-based Industrial Bank when the big bank made another bid to manage the Treasury's OTCnet, a payments option for federal agencies it has managed for the last 10 years, the news service said.
Goldman Sachs and American Express did not immediately respond to S&P Global Market Intelligence's request for comment. JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. also did not respond to a request for comment.
