This paper analyzes empirical evidence regarding mergers and acquisitions in the global financial services industry. It examines the global deal-flow during the eleven-year period 1985-95 and generates a global typology of intra- and inter-sectoral M&A transactions among and between banks,...

Launching of the euro at the beginning of 1999 will accelerate reconfiguration of the financial intermediation process in Europe -- a process that is already well underway -- with dramatic consequences for commercial banking, investment banking, insurance and asset management functions. Banks,...

We argue that the fundamental cause of the financial crisis of 2007–2009 was that large, complex financial institutions ("LCFIs") took excessive leverage in the form of manufacturing tail risks that were systemic in nature and inadequately capitalized. We employ a set of headline facts about...

We investigate whether the diversification discount is simply a proxy for poor corporate governance. We find that the negative value impact of diversification is amplified by adverse governance variables such as low CEO ownership, low board independence, and board classification, and that...

This paper reexamines the separation of commercial and investment banking in the context of modern wholesale financial environment, dominated by a small cohort of “systemic” institutions. The paper traces the pathology of regulation and deregulation from the watershed events of the 1930s to...