And now the latest source of unhappiness comes from, of all places, community bankers.
The Independent Community Bankers of America, an industry group, wrote a letter to several senators on Wednesday that laid out the organization’s problems with Mr. Weiss’s appointment.
It follows planned opposition to Mr. Weiss from two prominent Democratic Senators: Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has won favor from the party’s liberal wing for her anti-Wall Street stance, and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the outgoing Senate majority whip.
Mr. Weiss needs approval from the Senate to join the Treasury Department.
Criticism of the nomination of Mr. Weiss, the global head of investment banking at Lazard and a significant donor to Democratic candidates, to be the Treasury Department’s under secretary for domestic finance boils down to a number of points. One is Mr. Weiss’s work on Burger King’s acquisition of the Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons, which was a corporate inversion that relocated the fast food empire’s corporate home to Canada.
According to news reports, several lawmakers — including Ms. Warren and Mr. Durbin — have indicated at the least some level of discomfort with Mr. Weiss’s Burger King assignment. Corporate inversions have become a significant target of the Obama administration, which has criticized the actions of several major companies to give up their American corporate citizenship to reduce their tax bill.
In fact, the Treasury Department unveiled new measures aimed at reducing inversions’ economic attractiveness several months ago, killing off the plans of the drug maker AbbVie to take over the Dublin-based Shire.
But Mr. Weiss’s experience in inversions appears limited to the Burger King deal. He did not advise the chain on the tax component of its Tim Hortons deal, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to discuss the deal. And Burger King has said repeatedly that its deal was not t motivated by a desire to shrink its tax bill. Indeed, it has said that the new company’s tax rate is expected to go down only a few percentage points, and that it would still buy Tim Hortons even if tax rules were changed to make inversions less lucrative.
Lazard itself has advised on only a few inversions so far this year, including Steris’s takeover of Synergy Health, a deal in which the firm advised the buyer, and Horizon Pharma’s acquisition of Irish counterpart Vidara Therapeutics, in which the investment bank worked for the seller. It also advised the Irish-domiciled fruit producer Fyffes in its since-canceled plans to merge with Chiquita.
At least one official within the Obama administration believes that Mr. Weiss will support the Treasury Department’s moves to reduce the appeal of inversions.
“I think certainly Mr. Weiss would support reforms in that regard because the net effect of that is to essentially use the inversion method to avoid taxation in the United States and that’s not right,” John Podesta, a counselor to the White House, told Bloomberg Television last week.
Another reason to oppose Mr. Weiss that was cited by Ms. Warren and the community bankers group is his focus on mergers and acquisitions and international finance. Both have argued that such a professional background is too narrow for a Treasury post that includes negotiating with Congress over the federal government’s borrowing limits, popularly known as the debt ceiling.
“While Mr. Weiss has impressive credentials as a top Wall Street executive specializing in international mergers and acquisitions, Wall Street is already well represented at Treasury, and the narrow focus of Mr. Weiss’s professional experience is a serious concern for I.C.B.A. and community banks nationwide,” the community bankers’ group wrote in its letter.
Supporters of Mr. Weiss’s nomination would argue that the domestic finance post has an international component, given that many buyers of federal government debt are foreign investors, and that overall awareness of the international economy is important to the position. (Politico has heard much the same thing.)
For the bankers group, anyone taking up the domestic finance position should also have a background near and dear to the group’s heart: community banking. The organization’s letter notes that it has called for the creation of an assistant secretary for community banking to have a say in the policy-making process.
“In the absence of an assistant secretary for community banking, I.C.B.A. believes it is critical the under secretary for domestic finance possess a thorough understanding of community banking, preferably based on professional experience in that industry,” the group wrote.
A spokesperson for the White House said in a statement, “Antonio Weiss is a highly qualified nominee and we look forward to the Senate’s consideration of his nomination and swift confirmation.”