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Report
Transformation of corporate scope in U.S. banks: patterns and performance implications
Using a novel database containing the time-series details of the organizational structure of individual bank holding companies, this paper presents the first population-wide study of the transformation in business scope of U.S. banks. Expanding scope has a negative impact on performance on average. However, we find that firms whose expansion keeps them closer to the prevailing ?modal bank? are better off compared with those pursuing generic diversification. Moreover, we find that early expanders into particular activities benefit more, whereas late adopters, rather than benefitting by ...
Discussion Paper
Were Banks Ever 'Boring'?
In a previous post, I documented that much of the expansion into nontraditional activities by U.S. banks began well before the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, the legislation that repealed much of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The historical record actually contains many prior instances of the Glass-Steagall restrictions being circumvented, with nonbank firms allowed to operate as financial conglomerates and engage in activities that go beyond traditional banking. These broad industry dynamics might indicate that the business of banking tends to expand firm boundaries beyond ...
Discussion Paper
Were Banks 'Boring' before the Repeal of Glass-Steagall?
Since the global financial crisis and Great Recession, many critics have called for regulatory and legislative reforms to restore a system of ?boring? banks constrained to traditional banking activities like deposit taking and lending. The narrative underlying this argument holds that the partial repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act enabled banks to expand into nontraditional activities such as securities trading and underwriting, thereby contributing to the financial crisis some ten years later. The implication is that if we could restore the Glass-Steagall ...
Discussion Paper
Going with the Flow: Changes in Banks’ Business Model and Performance Implications
Does the performance of banks improve or worsen when banks enter into new business activities? And does it matter which activities a bank expands into, or retreats from, and when that decision is made? These important questions have remained unaddressed due to a lack of data. In a recent publication, we used a unique data set detailing the organizational structure of the entire population of U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs). In this post, we draw on that research to show that while scope expansion on average hurts performance, entering into activities that are highly synergistic with core ...