<div id="subtitle">Bankers seek to improve image as Senate talks on how to regulate them hit impasse</div><div><p>Looking to douse public and congressional anger, chief executives at some of the biggest financial institutions are on a mission to repair their image and gain more influence over legislation that would overhaul regulations that govern their industry.</p><p>They have their work cut out for them.</p><p>Attempts to reach a bipartisan agreement on new regulations hit an impasse in the Senate Banking Committee on Friday, a day after Chairman Christopher Dodd accused the financial industry of deploying "an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms we have been working so hard to achieve."</p><p>Eager to change that tone, top bankers fanned out across Capitol Hill this week, meeting with House and Senate members involved in banking policies and assuring them that they, too, want to prevent another financial meltdown.</p><p>"The No. 1 goal we have is to be relevant to this fix," said Richard Davis, the chairman and CEO of U.S. Bancorp.</p><p>The breakdown in the Senate negotiations, however, is a setback for the bill. A priority of the Obama administration, the legislation intends to address weaknesses in the financial system that led to the crisis that gripped Wall Street in fall 2008. The legislation aims to increase consumer protections on loans and credit cards, add restrictions to previously unregulated financial products and find ways to dismantle failing firms without resorting to taxpayer bailouts. The House has already passed its version of the bill.</p><p>But Dodd, D-Conn., has been unable to find common ground over consumer protections with Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the committee. Nonetheless, Dodd said he will incorporate compromises into the bill that were agreed on by other committee members from both parties.</p><p>Shelby, siding with banks, opposes creation of a new entity that would have authority to write its own regulations. Currently, consumer protections are carried out by the various bank regulators, who also watch over the safety and soundness of banks.</p><p>"In order to strike the appropriate balance, they must be integrated with each other, not separated from each other," Shelby said Friday.</p><p>If the banking industry lobbyists have been the combat troops in the effort to influence regulatory legislation, then these bankers are casting themselves as the diplomats, seeking to assure lawmakers that they share more in common than not.</p><p>Their effort is part of an industry-wide push to put a face on banking that is not defined by Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, institutions that have borne the brunt of public and congressional criticism.</p><p>"The word 'bank' covers a lot of ground; part of our role is to provide some differentiation," said James Smith, chairman and CEO of Webster Bank, a regional New England bank based in Connecticut, Dodd's home state.</p><p>The industry is also taking the public's pulse, underwriting national surveys of customers, small businesses and corporations to gauge how much damage control they have ahead of them. The polling is a joint effort of the Financial Services Roundtable and the American Bankers Association, two industry groups.</p><p>"We need to tell our story better than we have in the past," said Davis, who is also the roundtable's chairman.</p><p>Robert Kelly, chairman and CEO of Bank of New York Mellon, said bankers agree with the administration that no financial institution should be deemed too big to fail. Kelly, who heads an industry group of the biggest banks, the Financial Services Forum, said they support regulations that would require large institutions to pay for the orderly dismantling of failing firms.</p><p>At the same time, they still have substantive differences that have been major sticking points between Democrats and Republicans. One of them is their objections to a consumer financial protection agency — the issue that ended up dividing Dodd and Shelby.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=68530296&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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