[Closed] 37 banks become 4 in 20 years.

And they say that competition is at the heart of capitalism....

Too big to fail...

They all look like relatively small fry for the USA - so just normal consolidation once the market saturates.

There are 900 banks in Italy.

Pretty scary, 4 banks in a country the size of the EU.

Remaining four?

People need to do their research before writing stuff...

Over 5,000 still - so calm down people, the world is not about to end

Bananamex

Will we end up living in a world with one Bank, one super market, one car manufacturer etc?

You mean like this one?

[img] /revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20071016222558[/img]

The big four are much bigger than the rest - and that's the worry
[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_banks_in_the_United_States ]linky[/url]

4 is probably enough for the US, if:

1) their version of the Competition Commission never allows 2 to merge, unless one of them is about to fail and even then only on a temporary basis. I believe they were implicated in Barclays not taking Leman at the last minute and could have avoided the ‘great recession’ well, for a few months anyway, Barclays bought it the day after bankruptcy instead.

2) the Federal Reserve Board of Governors ensures they are compliant with their version of the Basel 3 accord, even if they never sign up to Basel because - 'merica

Half of these retail banks didn't even compete with each other in the same geographic market so their merger increased competition, not reduced it

There is no shortage of retail banks in the US. My old local town/village has its own private commercial bank! There are also zillions of credit unions.

Anyone else drive past B&M stores humming the buy 'n' large tune?