Leary is scheduled to testify before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington, D.C., next week as it considers legislation that would ban commercial companies, such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot, from owning industrial banks.

Industrial banks were authorized under an exemption in federal banking laws that was enacted by Congress in 1987. That exemption - some disparagingly refer to it as a loophole - for the first time since the Great Depression gave stock brokerages, retailers and other commercial companies an easy way to own a federally insured bank.

Yet with Wal-Mart's application, some critics began to question that federal exemption and wondered whether the industrial banking industry was going too far in mixing banking and commerce.

As a result, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. last year adopted a six-month moratorium on issue deposit insurance for new industrial banks. That moratorium was lifted Jan. 31 for financial companies but remained in place for commercially owned industrial banks for another year.

"We're hopeful that this [Wal-Mart's withdrawal of its application] will allow the FDIC to begin the process of approving the applications that are waiting," Leary said.

There are four applications from financial services companies now pending before the FDIC, said Leary. Utah is home to 31 active industrial banks, or about half of all those in the U.S.