In addition, the Congress required that, to be a part of a financial holding company, an institution must be well capitalized and well managed. An interesting observation is the slow pace of change since 1999. The slow pace is, no doubt, partly a result of the economic slowdown and the stock market decline.
But I suspect that these factors do not fully explain what has happened. Indeed, I suggest that the financial conglomerate, or the financial supermarket, or whatever you want to call it, is in fact much more difficult to implement than many may have thought. True, there were about 600 domestic financial holding companies of the end of 2002.