| The worldwide financial services industry has undergone in the past two decades an unprecedented wave of consolidation within and across its three main sub-sectors: banking, securities activities and insurance. Today's observers assert that in ten years, most of the financial sector will be controlled by a small group of huge diversified banks. By enacting the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, Congress repealed the depression-era "Glass-Steagall" Act of 1933 and thereby officially removed the longstanding legal barriers that insulated banks from securities firms and insurance companies. As promoters of financial convergence have long been claiming that the introduction of universal banks in the United States would produce numerous benefits for themselves, but also for the economy and for their customers, these predictions can be assessed today in the light of empirical analysis. Now that "financial supermarkets" are totally legal in the United States, it is essential to assess whether they are economically and morally viable. |
