Hearings are set on Wal-Mart bank plan

Public hearings on Wal-Mart's application to open an industrial bank have been scheduled in April, the first of their kind on a bank application.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. announced it will hold hearings on Wal-Mart Bank's industrial bank application for federal deposit insurance on April 10-11 in the Washington, D.C., area and April 25-26 in the Kansas City area.

Exact locations were not announced, but they will be posted on the FDIC Web site later.

Wal-Mart submitted its applications to the FDIC and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions in July 2005. As of Thursday, the Utah department had not accepted Wal-Mart's application as complete.

The FDIC has received about 1,900 comment letters regarding Wal-Mart's application. Concerns include perceptions that the retailer is crossing the line between banking and commerce, and that it may seek to "outprice" competing financial institutions on financial services products the way it does many of its retail competitors.

Those who are interested in speaking at the hearings must deliver a written request to the FDIC no later than 5 p.m. March 10 and deliver a copy of the written statement and a two-page summary to the FDIC no later than 5 p.m. March 28, the FDIC stated.

Participants generally will be limited to a five-minute presentation at the hearing. There is no limit on the length of a participant's written statement. Opportunities to make an oral presentation at the hearing are limited, the FDIC said, and not all requests may be granted.