Diamond Sees M&A Taking Out 3,000 US Banks in 2-3 Years

Bob Diamond, founding partner and CEO of Atlas Merchant Capital, says there’s an opportunity to drastically reduce the number of US banks as regulators embrace consolidation of the industry. “Today we have 4,500 banks,” Diamond tells Bloomberg Television. “We think that there’s going to be consolidation that takes that number of 4,500 to something closer to 1,000 or 1,500 literally over the next 2 to 3 years.