WASHINGTON — Nine of the largest US banks have submitted plans offering road maps for how the government could break up and sell off their assets if they are in danger of failing.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday released summaries of the ‘‘living wills’’ for Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and UBS.
The plans are required under the 2010 financial overhaul, which gave regulators power to seize and dismantle banks that threaten the broader financial system.
The government is trying to prevent another situation in which taxpayers are asked to provide bailouts to banks, which is what happened during the 2008 financial crisis. At the time, regulators did not have rules in place to unwind banks considered ‘‘too big to fail.’’
More than 100 other banks are required to submit living wills by the end of next year. All banks are required to update their living wills annually — or sooner if there is a material change in the company.
The lenders were asked to detail assets, debts, and how they are tied to other companies, and to spell out how they would be wound down in a fast, orderly bankruptcy process.
Most of the information in the summaries had already been made public in regulatory filings. The more detailed plans provided to regulators were not made public because they include proprietary information.
So what details were included in the summaries?
JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank by assets, talked about maintaining a ‘‘fortress balance sheet’’ and a sufficient global liquidity reserve to deal with problems that might arise. At the end of last year, it estimated that reserve to be $379 billion.
The bank also declared its living will ‘‘provides for the resolution of the firm in a rapid and orderly way that, in the firm’s view, would not pose systemic risk to the US financial system.’’
Citigroup said it could be wound down in a way that addresses a potential systemic disruption in US or global financial markets without the use of taxpayer funds.
Bloomberg News reported Bank of America’s summary said assets could go to a “range of buyers.”
Goldman Sachs said all financial institutions should be able to undergo a bankruptcy process without taxpayer aid.
Morgan Stanley and Barclays said their plans would mitigate any serious financial jolt.
The Federal Reserve and FDIC, however, have the last word. If they decide a bank’s plan is not adequate, they can require the company to raise more capital, tamp down growth, or sell off units.
The industry has criticized the living wills as a pretext for allowing the government to split up big banks. Others say the living wills don’t go far enough, because they do not address the underlying issue that banks are too big.