These key findings cover thirteen nations (the G-10 plus Australia and Spain). The study documents high levels of merger and acquisition activity among financial firms during the 1990s and an increasing pace of consolidation, including a noticeable acceleration in the last three years of the decade. Most of the consolidation has been within countries and within segments of the financial sector.
Cross-border and cross-sector consolidations have been less frequent. Our research shows that financial consolidation substantially decreased the number of banking firms during the 1990s in almost every country studied and that national concentration of the banking industry tended to increase. Financial consolidation has helped to create a significant number of large and, in some cases, increasingly complex, financial institutions.