The Board believes that umbrella supervision is a realistic necessity for the protection of our financial system and to limit any misuse of the sovereign credit. The bank holding company organization is increasingly being managed so as to take advantage of the synergies between its component parts in order to deliver better products to the market and higher returns to stockholders.
Such synergies cannot occur if the model of the holding company is one in which the parent is just, in effect, a portfolio investor in its subsidiary. Indeed, virtually all of the large holding companies now operate as integrated units and are managed as such.