With mediocre returns and money moving out of equities to fixed income, some financial firms are merging or dropping their equities operations.

FORBES: Equity Markets Will See Less Of The Same -- Instinet

They placed limits on interest rates, prohibited deposit-taking institutions from issuing securities, and, by preventing financial institutions from merging with one another, kept most of them relatively small.

NEWYORKER: What Good Is Wall Street?

Giulio Tremonti, Italy's finance minister, proposes merging four financial regulators into one super-regulator or, failing that, uniting Consob, the toothless securities-market regulator, the Bank of Italy, the banks' watchdog, and the antitrust authority.

ECONOMIST: Parmalat

As Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, likes to point out, the entire banking system of many an emerging country is no bigger than a typical regional bank in the United States (the sort now considered too small for global financial markets, and merging furiously).

ECONOMIST: It all depends

And the rise of the vast financial conglomerates into which banks, insurers and securities firms are merging requires the creation of new methods of supervision.

ECONOMIST: Lenses of last resort

Financial planning should be one of the first steps to take when merging your life together.

FORBES: This Week in Credit Card News: Revenue-Draining Regulations, Rising Debt Levels, Profits for MasterCard

However, the European financial markets did react favorably to news that two major Greek banks were merging.

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The other lift could come from more aggressive financial plumbing, with Treasury and the FDIC pushing banks to confront their losses and closing or merging institutions that are bound to fail.

WSJ: Bernanke Goes All In

In making his offer, Hefner said that he is not interested in selling or merging Playboy, selling shares to a third party or entering into discussions with any other financial sponsor because of his concern for the company's brand, the editorial direction of the magazine and the company's legacy.

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