Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee, on Sunday revealed plans that would put him strikingly at odds with the Obama administration’s proposals to reform Wall Street and would almost certainly provoke a war with the financial industry.

Mr Dodd, a former presidential candidate who is facing a tough re-election battle in his home state of Connecticut next year, told the New York Times that he was drawing up plans to merge the four Washington bank regulators into one banking “super-regulator”.