Each governor serves a 14 year term and terms are staggered. The President appoints one governor to be the chair. The chair has a four year term. One cause for bank failures in the depression was the lack of confidence in the safety of deposits. The U.S. has about 10,000 commercial banks.
Branches are the additional operations of the bank that carry out banking operations.
Each state controls the type and number of branches that a bank can open. States on the East Coast are more lenient about branch requirements. Until 1994 Federal legislation prohibited interstate branching. Bank holding company a corporation that owns several different banks. Many states let bank holding companies cross state lines and that lets them get around federal regulations on interstate banking.