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The policy debate on whether to strengthen or to remove the legal barriers between banking and commerce has paid little attention to what the practical effects of removing the barriers would be. To help answer this question, this article, the first part of a two-part study, provides an overview of the potential gains of integrating banking and commerce. Economic theory, the authors note, suggests that joint corporate ownership of banks and commercial firms has several potential benefits, including economies of scale and scope, increased internal capital markets, and diversification. Commercial firms could also enjoy a significant reduction in funding costs if affiliation with a bank extended the federal safety net for banks to cover the commercial firms' liabilities. But some benefits are already available without common ownership. Moreover, common ownership may also result in some disadvantages, such as significant diseconomies of scale and scope. Actual experience provides better insight than theory can about the relative magnitudes of the benefits and costs of cross-industry combinations. U.S. experience with limited openings between banking and nonbank activities suggests that the most common combinations were banks with nonbank financial firms, relationships that were authorized by a 1999 reform act. Foreign experience and U.S. conglomerates of nonbank firms in different industries fail to provide compelling evidence for large-scale combinations of banking and commercial firms. JEL classification: G21, G34, G28 Keywords: banking and commerce, The application by Wal-Mart in 2005 to acquire a type of bank called an industrial loan company (ILC) sparked a renewed interest in the issue of mixing banking and commerce. [...]

Many banks believe that their customers are extremely sensitive to changes in fees and interest rates for retail deposit products. But recent research shows that in reality customers are fairly [...]

By Stanley D. Smith, Ph.D., and Larry A. Frieder, Ph.D. Dr. Smith holds the SunTrust Chair of Banking at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Frieder is the Eminent Bank [...]

'Bankers should discriminate (in pricing), provided the word means to measure and price risk properly with regard to legitimate economic characteristics of the client relationship....But bankers should be prosecuted for [...]

To fee or not to fee. That is the question on bankers' minds nationwide. Fees are sending the media, legislators, and consumer-advocate groups into a feeding frenzy and the banking [...]

It all started on a tennis court. Sam Kitchell, the founder and chairman of Kitchell Contractors Inc. of Arizona, a privately held construction company in Phoenix, learned from a tennis [...]

Walk out with these Ordinary folk in search of a safe haven WAY back in 1989, when Japan was still flush with money, the government tossed the country's 3,000-odd towns [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 Capital Bank 0.99-1.00 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.00-1.01 Centura Call for rates Coastal Federal [...]

LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 Capital Bank 0.99-1.00 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.24-1.25 Centura Call for rates Coastal Federal Credit Union [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 Capital Bank 1.34-1.35 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.24-1.25 Centura Call for rates Coastal Federal [...]

Europe's central bank has cut interest rates, at last AFTER a summer pause, the motley crew of economists, hacks and bankers who watch the European Central Bank were back on [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 Capital Bank 1.34-1.35 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.54-1.55 Centura 1.98-2.00 Coastal Federal Credit Union [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK MONEY MARKET SAVINGS RATES % DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 Capital Bank 1.49-1.50 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.54-1.55 Centura 1.98-2.00 Coastal Federal Credit Union [...]

BANK LOAN RATES % Auto Loans 1 3 year 4 year Capital Bank 8.50 8.75 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 8.95-10.50 9.25-10.75 Centura Nego. Nego. Coastal Federal Credit Union 7.75 [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 Capital Bank 1.49-1.50 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.54-1.55 Centura 1.98-2.00 Coastal Federal Credit Union [...]

The primary purpose of a funds-transfer-pricing (FTP) process is to remove interest-rate risk from a bank's lines of business and to centralize that risk in a treasury unit. The idea [...]

BANK LOAN RATES % Auto Loans [1] 3 year 4 year Capital Bank 8.50 8.75 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 8.95-10.50 9.25-10.75 Centura Nego. Nego. Coastal Federal Credit Union 7.75 [...]

LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 Capital Bank 1.49-1.50 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.54-1.55 Centura 1.98-2.00 Coastal Federal Credit Union 4.07 Crescent [...]

The euro is languishing against all the major currencies this morning after yesterday's decision by the European Central Bank to cut interest rates by a quarter point. Though any cut [...]

LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance = $2,500 Capital Bank 1.98-2.00 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.69-1.70 Centura 1.98-2.00 Coastal Federal Credit Union 3.04 Crescent [...]

BANK LOAN RATES % Auto Loans [1] 3 year 4 year Capital Bank 9.50 9.75 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 8.95-10.50 9.25-10.75 Centura Nego. Nego. Coastal Federal Credit Union 8.00 [...]

TRIANGLE MARKETS WATCH WINNERS & LOSERS UP: 42 The week's biggest winners Gain %Chg. 1. Sapiens 0.31 47.81 2. Spectrasite Hlds. 1.36 46.92 3. Pliant Systems 0.07 46.67 4. Tekelec [...]

Jon Gorvett reports from Istanbul on the financial catastrophe that has brought the Turkish economy to its knees It is said that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance $2,500 Capital Bank 1.98-2.00 Central Carolina Bank & Trust 1.88-1.90 Centura 1.98-2.00 Coastal Federal Credit Union 3.04 [...]

Fears of inflation, technology-sector volatility and higher interest rates continued to impede the broader markets. The Federal Reserve Bank raised interest rates on May 16 and indicated that more rate [...]

NATIONAL AUSTRALIA Bank is restructuring business transaction account fees to align charges with the rising popularity of electronic transactions. The new business transaction account fees, which take effect from May [...]

NATIONAL AUSTRALIA Bank, the last of the big four banks to plunge into the Internet stockbroking pool, has thrown down the gauntlet by offering cheaper transaction fees. The non-advisory discount [...]

The debate on automated teller machine (ATM) fees heated up recently, when voters in San Francisco and Santa Monica approved bans on banks' charging non-customers for using their ATMs. A [...]

Things have been heating up in Minnesota and far more than the summer's heat wave is involved. 'Concern over the ag economy has gone from people being a little concerned [...]

Year end figures for 1998 delivered a nasty shock for most oil producers, not least Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter, as prices, in real terms, were back to levels [...]

Ask a few questions about service charges and you unleash a flood of wide-ranging opinions. For example, Richard Carlander doesn't believe in assessing a lot of fees. 'Maybe you pick [...]

THE FEDERAL RESERVE RECENTly proposed a new alternative short-term borrowing mechanism for banks, in an attempt to lower the volatility of the federal funds rate during the end of the [...]

INTERNATIONALLY, CONTINUED INCREASES IN global cross border trade provide a significant opportunity for banks in terms of transaction and other fees charged to settle those trades. However, for the many [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % CERTIFICATES OF DEPOSIT MONEY MARKET $10,000 deposit (rate-yield) DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS Average balance - $2,500 3 mos. Capital Bank 0.75 2.08-2.10 Cardinal State Bank [...]

TRIANGLE MARKETS WATCH Banks Name Price Price Weekly Price Price Percent. Dec. 19 Dec. 19 Percent. 12 mos. 6 mos. Chg. in Change ago ago 12 mos. BB&T 36.10 34.91 [...]

BANK RATES LOCAL BANK SAVINGS RATES % MONEY MARKET CERTIFICATES OF DEPOSIT DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS $10,000 deposit (rate-yield) Average balance - $2,500 3 mos. Capital Bank 0.99-1.00 2.37-2.40 Cardinal State Bank [...]

BANK LOAN RATES % Auto Loans (1) Revolving Home (2) 3 year 4 year Rate Capital Bank 7.50 7.75 P+.5 Cardinal State Bank 7.75 8.00 P+1 Central Caroline 8.95-10.50 9.25-10.75 [...]

Australian banks are criticised more about fees on personal transaction accounts than any other issue. Service fees on individual transactions are perceived as generating multi-billion dollar profits for the banks, [...]

Kenneth Kehrer, Ph.D., contributing editor, and president of Kenneth Kehrer Associates, a Princeton, N.J. based consultancy. In 1994, banks accounted for almost one-third of all individual fixed annuity sales in [...]

NOT before time, Tokyo's financial bigwigs are sounding worried. On July 5th Yasuo Matsushita, the governor of the Bank of Japan, admitted that Japan's recovery had 'somewhat stalled' and called [...]

Loan Pricing Corp.'s recent survey of lenders to middle-market companies shows that last year was a banner year for borrowing, nationwide. Compared with 1993 rates, loan prices dropped across the [...]