Foreign currency reserves of Asian central banks now account for 70 percent of the World currency reserves and financed more than half of the current account deficit of the United States in 2003. There was a time in the late 1960s when Pakistan’s exports exceeded total exports of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.
In the United States of America, there had been over 7,000 cases of bank mergers since 1980, while the same trend occurred in the United Kingdom and other European countries. Specifically, in the period 19971998, 203 bank mergers and acquisitions took place in the Euro area. Cross-country mergers are also taking hold.