Research Paper on:
Global Finance Trends

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
local businesses and institutions. Banks pretty much kept to their own territories, rarely moving out of their cities and, in the United States, forbidden from moving out of their states  because of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. However, in this day and age of globalization, the friendly neighborhood corner bank is more likely to be the multinational financial corporation. In  addition to dealing with an individuals savings and checking account, that bank could also have fingers in an Internet presence, global interests and promotion of other financial services. Even though  banks still serve their regions, theyre gearing up to become more globally competitive. The purpose of this paper is to examine trends that are taking place within the sector of  international banking and finance. Consolidations Because of provision repeals of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, as well as structural changes in banking  itself, more and more banks will be merging and consolidating both with one another and with non-bank financial firms (Soper, 2001). This has especially been prevalent within the U.S. banking  industry, which has seen mergers of Chase Manhattan with J.P. Morgan to form J.P. Morgan Chase; Firstar with U.S. Bancorp and Fleet Financial with BankBoston, leading to FleetBoston Financial (Soper,  2001). Consolidation, overall, has led to the decline of banks by more than 40 percent since 1984 (Soper, 2001). The three main reasons for the uptick in mergers and acquisitions  are 1) cost savings and/or operational efficiencies; 2) better ability to compete in the global marketplace and 3) provision for a controlled exit from financial services industry of inefficient and  ineffective competitors (Soper, 2001). Mergers and acquitions of banks and other financial institutions is not new; the first real activity in this