Strategies of Major British Banks Since Big Bang

For the first version of this paper I was given the task of analysing the strategies of 'universal banks', but that is not a very useful way of de- scribing the large banks in any banking system because nowadays the term has a number of different meanings. It began as a description of the German banks, in which the holding of participations in the shares of corporate customers was a necessary element of the term, but now it seems to mean little more than unspecialised, thus including most banks that operate in several markets. With this usage the term can cover banks of any size, and the official Netherlands banking statistics go so far as to lump all commercial and savings banks together under the single heading of 'universal banks'. Very few people would naturally consider a small local bank, savings bank or building society as a uni- versal bank, and it is therefore necessary to introduce additional criteria. The most important of these are (1) that it should undertake both retail and wholesale business and (2) that it should operate not only throughout its own country but in some other countries as well. In other words, the term implies both overall size and importance in particular markets.