When Gramm-Leach-Bliley became law in 1999, many predicted the rise of the financial conglomerate - an entity that would provide a full range of banking, securities, and insurance products and services to institutional and retail customers. However, this prediction has not been realized, and the pace of change has been relatively slow since 1999.
The slow pace is, no doubt, partly a result of the economic slowdown and stock market decline from 2000 to last year. But I suspect that these factors do not explain fully why we have not seen the rise of the financial conglomerate.