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Congress and federal financial regulators have long prioritized the safety and soundness of banking firms. But at the same time, the directors and officers of banking firms are legally bound to prioritize shareholder wealth maximization, which creates incentives for risk-taking that work against these regulatory goals. This shareholder primacy norm has long been a central feature of corporate governance, but as I describe in this Article its application to banks was not a deliberate policy choice but rather a historical accident. Indeed, banks possess several unique features that make shareholder wealth maximization an inapt governance priority for them. Banks are highly leveraged, which increases the importance of creditor agency costs. Banks also enjoy government guarantees, either explicit or implicit, on their short-term debt, and thus their governance is a matter of public concern. Finally, bank failures result in high negative externalities, and this also creates a strong public interest in bank safety and soundness. This Article argues that a new federal governance regime for banking institutions is appropriate and consistent with the historical purposes of banking regulations and charter oversight in the United States. Furthermore, such a regime would reduce the tensions between the law of state entities and the sprawling federal banking regulatory framework created by Congress, and harmonize the internal governance of banking firms with the broader goals of external banking regulations. Finally, I offer some thoughts on the key principles that should be present in any such federal governance regime for banking. For too long, we have tolerated a "cat-and-mouse" dynamic in banking, one in which regulators have sought to identify and address risky practices while knowing that the directors and officers of banking firms have strong incentives to take on higher risk. By changing this paradigm and realigning the incentives inherent in banking governance, we can take a major step towards ensuring long-term stability in our financial system.

Part I briefly describes the traditional agency–cost approach to corporate governance and the rationale that is offered for elevating the agency–cost concerns of shareholders over those of other stakeholders (especially creditors). But as Part I goes on to argue, even if this justification for shareholder primacy is convincing in corporate governance generally (and there are many who do not find it so), several unique characteristics of banks obviate the reasoning behind shareholder primacy. Banks are highly leveraged, which exacerbates creditor–shareholder agency conflicts and places greater importance on the interests of creditors. Banks enjoy government guarantees, and thus their corporate governance (and allocation of gains and losses) is not merely a matter of private ordering, but one that implicates the public interest. And bank failures create massive negative social and economic costs not borne by bank investors, providing another key basis for rejecting shareholder primacy in bank governance. Part II provides an overview of the potential solutions for bank governance and argues that a realignment of bank governance priorities—specifically, deemphasizing shareholder primacy and expressly recognizing creditor interests—is likely to be most promising. Part II also briefly reviews the possibility of using existing laws—specifically, longstanding "commitment statutes" and the relatively recent phenomenon of statutes authorizing "benefit corporations"—as a means to help reorder bank governance.