Ben S Bernanke: Community banking Speech by Mr Ben S Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the Independent Community Bankers of America National Convention and Techworld, Nashville, Tennessee (via prerecorded video), 14 March 2012.
At the moment mergers are taking place mainly at the national level. The reason is that, especially, retail banking is still rather segmented due to legal and cultural differences in member countries. Cross-border mergers in retail banking look much less likely at present than in wholesale banking.