The Federal Reserve formally released a broad proposal to ease Basel III and G-SIB capital requirements and opened a 90-day public comment period. The plan was presented as a joint regulatory effort with the FDIC and OCC and would modestly reduce capital requirements for the largest U.S. banks while providing larger reductions for regional lenders. Existing topic details state that the measures under consideration would lower capital requirements for the biggest banks by 4.8%, while the revised Basel III proposal would still result in a 1.4% increase in requirements for large banks overall. Officials said the changes could free billions of dollars for lending, stock buybacks, and dividends.