Antitrust and Banking

• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X9604100212
• Published date: 01 June 1996
• Date: 01 June 1996
• Author: Eugene A. Ludwig
• Subject Matter: Article

The Antitrust Bulletin/Summer 1996

Antitrust and banking

BY EUGENE A. LUDWIG*

475

The wave of bank mergers we have experienced the past several

years has generally been hailed on Wall Street, where analysts

applaud the prospect

of

economies of scale and scope created by

consolidation. The same phenomenon can be viewed with trepida-

tion on Main Street, however, where Americans' traditional dis-

trust of all things big raises concerns about how smaller markets

and

small business

customers

will be served in a future with

fewer, and considerably larger banks. Different groups have dif-

ferent ways of raising these basic concerns. Bank customers are

asking Are these new banking behemoths going to be too big to

serve me in the way I want? Consumer advocates ask, Are they

getting

so big as to

stifle

competition in

the

local markets in

which they operate?

Are the public's concerns justified? Certainly they are nothing

new.

Throughout

the

history

of

our country, Americans have

expressed reservations whenever they have seen aconcentration

*Comptroller of the Currency.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Remarks before the Antitrust Conference sponsored by

the Office

of

the Comptroller

of

the Currency, Washington, DC, Nov. 16,

1995.

© 1996 by Federal Legal Publications. Inc.