NEW YORK  - Put the chief executive of one U.S. bank in front of a panel of posturing politicians, and it can force him out of his job. Put seven in the spotlight, though, and they have safety in numbers. The bosses of Wall Street institutions with a combined market value of almost $1 trillion faced a congressional grilling on Wednesday. Amidst mostly bland answers, some industry-wide problems came to light.

Appearing as a gang in front of the House Financial Services Committee diluted the impact of the first such hearing since the financial crisis. None of the seven, from veteran JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon to Goldman Sachs newbie David Solomon, had to hold forth for long on any subject. That’s a contrast with former Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan, who appeared alone before the panel in March and quit a couple of weeks later.

Financial numbers are on the banks’ side, too. Faced with the overarching question of whether the system is safer than it was a decade ago, the answer is yes. The seven institutions – Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, State Street, Bank of New York Mellon and Goldman Sachs – all boast a Tier 1 common equity ratio, a measure of bank resilience, above 10 percent. Nationally, the proportion of bad loans is at its lowest in a decade.

Banks that publish hundreds of pages of financial filings were never likely to give away much that’s new. The risks they flagged, like risky corporate lending and so-called shadow banking, are hardly novel. Nor are their protestations of social usefulness, including Citi’s Mike Corbat noting that the bank lent $12 billion to small businesses last year.

Still, there were awkward moments. Quizzed on the fairness of being one of three on the stand whose pay is more than 350 times that of the median employee, Corbat limply blamed his board and shareholders. Meanwhile, although most of the bank chiefs talk a good game on lending to, and hiring, women and minorities, their own male, white homogeneity is unmissable.

Such issues are obvious without long, grandstanding hearings on Capitol Hill. Overall, banks are mostly doing what they’re supposed to and oiling the wheels of the economy. But if average Americans and the people who represent them don’t get that, Wall Street still has a problem.

CONTEXT NEWS

- The chief executives of seven large U.S. financial institutions on April 10 appeared before a U.S. congressional panel on the subject of “holding megabanks accountable”, the first such hearing since the financial crisis of 2008.

- The House Committee on Financial Services heard testimony from Citigroup’s Mike Corbat, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, State Street’s Ronald O’Hanley, Bank of New York Mellon’s Charles Scharf, and Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon.

- Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan appeared before the committee on March 12. Just over two weeks later he resigned.

(Editing by Richard Beales and Martin Langfield)

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