financial conglomerates

Briault  defined a financial conglomerate as a firm that undertakes at least two of five financial activities:intermediary/payments, insurance, securities/corporate finance, fund management and advising on or selling investment products to retail customers. He reports that while in 1978 the vast majority of UK banks engaged in just one of these five activities, by 1998, 8 firms were authorised to offer all five functions, 13 were authorised to offer four, and more than 50 were authorised to offer three. The Briault figures are for the UK, but rapid growth of financial conglomerates is taking place in the world’s key financial sectors. Financial reform (e.g., ‘‘big bangs’’) in many countries eliminating (to some degree, depending on the country) segmented financial sectors has encouraged banks to become part of financial conglomerates. Given the nature of most activities listed above, virtually all conglomerates are global. Briault identified the advantages and disadvantages of financial conglomerates. First,the efficiency of the financial system is improved if these conglomerates can achieve economies of scale and scope . Economies of scale is a long-run concept, where all factors of production (e.g., labour, capital, property) are variable. An equiproportional increase in factor inputs leads to a greater than equiproportional increase in output. Firms operate on the falling part of their average cost curves. For example, suppose there are three factor inputs: deposits, labour, property and one output: loans. Then, in the presence of economies of scale, the doubling of deposits, labour and property would result in loans more than doubling.

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