Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with corporate finance, such a bank might assist in raising financial capital by underwriting or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of debt or equity securities. An investment bank may also assist companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and provide ancillary services such as market making, trading of derivatives and equity securities, FICC services or research. Most investment banks maintain prime brokerage and asset management departments in conjunction with their investment research businesses. As an industry, it is broken up into the Bulge Bracket, Middle Market, and boutique market.
The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999–2001). It repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in the market among banking companies, securities companies, and insurance companies that prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. With the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. Furthermore, it failed to give to the SEC or any other financial regulatory agency the authority to regulate large investment bank holding companies. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
The Glass–Steagall legislation describes four provisions of the United States Banking Act of 1933 separating commercial and investment banking. The article 1933 Banking Act describes the entire law, including the legislative history of the provisions covered herein.
In the United States, banking had begun by the 1780s, along with the country's founding. It has developed into a highly influential and complex system of banking and financial services. Anchored by New York City and Wall Street, it is centered on various financial services, such as private banking, asset management, and deposit security.
William Philip Gramm is an American economist and politician who represented Texas in both chambers of Congress. Though he began his political career as a Democrat, Gramm switched to the Republican Party in 1983. Gramm was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1996 Republican Party presidential primaries against eventual nominee Bob Dole.
A commercial bank is a financial institution which accepts deposits from the public and gives loans for the purposes of consumption and investment to make profit.
The Banking Act of 1933 was a statute enacted by the United States Congress that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and imposed various other banking reforms. The entire law is often referred to as the Glass–Steagall Act, after its Congressional sponsors, Senator Carter Glass (D) of Virginia, and Representative Henry B. Steagall (D) of Alabama. The term "Glass–Steagall Act," however, is most often used to refer to four provisions of the Banking Act of 1933 that limited commercial bank securities activities and affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. That limited meaning of the term is described in the article on Glass–Steagall Legislation.
James Albert Smith Leach is an American academic and former politician. He served as ninth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2009 to 2013 and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa (1977–2007).
Regulatory responses to the subprime crisis addresses various actions taken by governments around the world to address the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis.
The Volcker Rule is § 619 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The rule was originally proposed by American economist and former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict United States banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that do not benefit their customers. Volcker argued that such speculative activity played a key role in the 2007–2008 financial crisis. The rule is often referred to as a ban on proprietary trading by commercial banks, whereby deposits are used to trade on the bank's own accounts, although a number of exceptions to this ban were included in the Dodd–Frank law.
Wall Street reforms are reforms or regulations of the financial industry in the United States.
Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke established the first modern American investment bank during the Civil War era. However, private banks had been providing investment banking functions since the beginning of the 19th century and many of these evolved into investment banks in the post-bellum era. However, the evolution of firms into investment banks did not follow a single trajectory. For example, some currency brokers such as Prime, Ward & King and John E. Thayer and Brother moved from foreign exchange operations to become private banks, taking on some investment bank functions. Other investment banks evolved from mercantile firms such as Thomas Biddle and Co. and Alexander Brothers.
This article details the history of banking in the United States. Banking in the United States is regulated by both the federal and state governments.
The Independent Commission on Banking was a United Kingdom government inquiry looking at structural and related non-structural reforms to the UK banking sector to promote financial stability and competition in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–08. It was established in June 2010 and produced its final report and recommendations in September 2011.
The Liikanen Report or "Report of the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on Bank Structural Reform" is a set of recommendations published in October 2012 by a group of experts led by Erkki Liikanen, governor of the Bank of Finland and ECB council member. On 3 July 2013, by large majority the European Parliament adopted an own initiative report called "Reforming the structure of the EU banking sector" that welcomes structural reform measures at Union level to tackle concerns on Too big to fail banks, that led to the publication of a proposal of Regulation on structural measures improving the resilience of EU credit institutions in January 2014. This proposal was withdrawn in July 2018.
This article is about 1933 United States Federal legislation that limited the interaction of commercial and investment banking. It analyzes the content of four sections of the Banking Act of 1933, which came to be known as "Glass-Steagall," and describes the content of the legislative text and its limits/loopholes.
The Glass–Steagall Act was a part of the 1933 Banking Act. It placed restrictions on activities that commercial banks and investment banks could do. It effectively separated those activities, so the two types of business could not mix, in order to protect consumer's money from speculative use. The Banking Act of 1935 clarified and otherwise amended Glass–Steagall.
The Glass–Steagall legislation was enacted by the United States Congress in 1933 as part of the 1933 Banking Act, amended as part of the 1935 Banking Act, and most of it was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA). Its protections and restrictions had also been chipped away during most of its existence by lenient regulatory interpretations and use of loopholes. After Glass–Steagall's 1999 repeal, there was a great deal of discussion in the banking and securities industries, and among policymakers and economists, about the practical positive and negative changes to the business and consumer environment. Later, as financial crises and other issues played out in the United States and even worldwide, arguments have broken out about whether Glass–Steagall, as originally intended, would have prevented these issues.
There have been several efforts or appeals in the United States to reinstate repealed sections of the Glass–Steagall Act following the financial crisis of 2007-08, as well as elsewhere to adopt similar financial reforms.
Executive Order 13772, titled "Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System", is an executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on February 3, 2017. The eighth executive action by the president during his first 100 days in office, it establishes the "core principles" of regulation under the Trump Administration and tasks the United States Department of the Treasury to review the Financial Stability Oversight Council, originally established under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and report to the President in 120 days on current regulations and their effectiveness in carrying out these core principles.
