Last year, the Federal Reserve responded to this trend by sharpening its supervisory focus on a smaller number of large complex banking organizations, both domestic and foreign. We now give increased attention to roughly twenty U.S.-owned and another ten foreign-owned banks.
Although they are generally the largest institutions we supervise, they warrant the greater attention not only because of their size, but also because of their on-and off-balance sheet activities, their broad range of products and services, their more complex domestic and international oversight structure, and their role in payment and settlement systems.