Abstract
This is a book about the evolution of the British commercial banking industry, as reflected primarily in the experiences of its four clearing banks — Barclays, Lloyds, Midland, and NatWest. The book concentrates mainly on the period since the 1960s, when the cosy, cartel position of the UK banks began to erode in the face of increasing competition. Though acknowledging the importance of history in shaping more recent developments, I limited myself to the past few decades for at least two reasons. First, banking scholars had already produced many detailed studies of the industry’s long history.1 Second, the changes taking place since the 1960s have been so momentous that they merit intensive study in their own right. Moreover, having reviewed several studies on how the industry had evolved before then, I could take that context into consideration in analyzing what was happening now.
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Notes and references
See, for example, Michael Collins, Money and Banking in the UK: A History, Croom Helm, London, 1988.
David T. Llewellyn, ‘A Strategic Perspective on the Global Banking Industry’, in Revue de La Banque, 6, 1995, pp. 302–12; and his ‘Universal Banking and the Public Interest: A British Perspective’, Ch. 5, pp. 161–204, in Anthony Saunders and Ingo Walter (eds), Universal Banking, Chicago, Irwin, 1996. Llewellyn, an economist and banking scholar, has written insightfully on this trend, particularly as exemplified in the UK. See also Jordi Canals, Universal Banking, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, Ch. 1.
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Flow of Funds Accounts, various editions.
Collins, op. cit., p. 405.
Ibid., p. 411–12.
Two recent examples are Itzhak Swary and Barry Topf, Global Financial Deregulation, Blackwell, Cambridge, 1992; and Anthony Saunders and Ingo Walter (eds), Universal Banking, Irwin, Chicago, 1996.
One exception is Canals, op. cit.
David Rogers, The Future of American Banking, McGraw Hill, New York, 1993.
Interestingly, Channon had provided some prescient comments on precisely this point in 1977. As he noted: ‘… the literature to date has not treated these firms as the individual and unique business organizations that they are, but rather has considered them collectively — as clearly defined, yet somehow characterless, groups of like enterprises. The research evidence, however clearly revealed that, while, for instance, the different clearing banks had features in common, there were also notable differences in the policies they were pursuing and the structures used to implement these policies.’ Derek Channon, British Banking Strategy, Macmillan, London, 1977, Preface, xi. Despite Channon’s admonitions, banking industry researchers have not looked at the strategy and structure of individual banks to any degree, with the exception of the author’s previous banking study and Canals’ recent work.
See Roy C. Smith and Ingo Walter, ‘Global Patterns of Mergers and Acquisition Activity in the Financial Services Industry’, a paper presented at the Conference on Mergers of Financial Institutions, New York University Salomon Center, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, 11 October 1996.
For a discussion of different types of universal banks, see Anthony Saunders and Ingo Walter, Universal Banking in the United States, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1994, Ch. 4.
This is the thesis of Roy Smith in his book, Comeback, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1993.
I am indebted to Professor David Llewellyn of Loughborough University for insights on this issue.
Smith and Walter, op. cit., p. 22.
Rogers, op. cit.
Robert Eccles and Dwight Crane, Doing Deals, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1988.
Andrew Campbell and Kathleen Sommers Luchs (eds), Strategic Synergy, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 1992.
Saunders and Walter, op. cit.
Originally, given their size and complexity, I was intending to do case studies of Barclays and NatWest alone. After gaining significant entry into the two other clearing banks, contrary to my expectations, I decided to include Lloyds and Midland also.
Robert M. Grant, Contemporary Strategy Analysis, Blackwell, Cambridge MA, 1995, p. 369.
Constantine C. Markides, Diversification, Refocusing, and Economic Performance, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1995.
Ibid., p. 164.
Robert Grant, ‘Diversification in The Financial Services Industry’, in Campbell and Luchs, op. cit., pp. 201–42.
Ibid., p. 231, quoted from Henry Kaufman, ‘Financial Institutions and the Fragile, Volatile Financial Markets’, in Arnold W. Sametz (ed.), The Emerging Financial Industry, Lexington Books, DC Heath, Lexington MA, 1985, pp. 26–7.
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© 1999 David Rogers
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Rogers, D. (1999). Introduction. In: The Big Four British Banks. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27760-5_1
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