The big five banks snapped up the leading stockbroking firms in the 1990s, becoming universal banks.
After the new policy takes effect this week, the big five banks have all set their one year savings deposit rates at 3.5%, unchanged from before the move.
Or to put it another way, the Treasury, Bank of England and Financial Services Authority, in reforming the banking system to stabilise it and protect taxpayers, may have inadvertently reinforced the market dominance of the UK's Big Five banks.
The big five SOE banks saw loan defaults rise quarter over quarter for the first time since 2005.
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The reason is that George Osborne is minded to accept the recommendation of the Independent Commission on Banking for a "substantially enhanced divestiture" by Lloyds - which the commission believes is essential in order to create an effective new competitor to the big five UK banks, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, HSBC and Santander.
The first is that the market is highly concentrated, with just five big consumer banks.
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Representatives of the Fed had already been dispatched to the "big five" Wall Street banks, making sure they increase their liquidity and lengthen the terms of their financing so they can weather the credit crisis.
Bank of America (BAC) touched a new post-crisis low on Monday, but Citigroup (C) has the dubious distinction of having shed the most value among the big banks in the last five years.
The Bank of China, the least bad of the country's four big banks, expects that in five years' time consumers will account for half of the bank's loans.
In the first nine months of 2010, the big six banks cleared more than thirty-five billion dollars in profits.
Financial services dominate the Canadian cadre with 16 banks (including five of the Big Six), insurers and diversified financial firms.
Financials, which have struggled for months as investors back away from the slow-profit growth at big banks, are up 3.3% in five days.
The Institute of International Finance, which is backed by the big banks, predicts such rules will raise lending rates between four and five percentage points in America, depressing GDP by a cumulative 2.7% by 2015 and employment by 2.9m.
If passed it would have big repercussions for the five biggest swaps dealers, which happen to be five of the biggest banks: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
As I-flex began to train its sights on big banks, some potential customers were hesitant, forcing the firm to dump the Citi tag altogether five years ago and rename itself.
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