This paper shows how financial contracts might be redesigned to allow for banks to manage the idiosyncratic component for their own accounts.

We use panel data from nine countries over the period 1996 to 2003 to test how revenue diversi-fication in conjunction with increasing bank size affects bank value. Using a comprehensive framework for bank performance measurement, we find no evidence for a conglomerate dis-count, unlike studies...

Asset market values react to economic news and policychanges, and consumers react to changes in asset marketvalues. The consumption-wealth channel of monetary policyspells out this mechanism: changes in monetary policy affectasset values, which in turn affect consumer spending onnondurable goods...

[...]I will begin with deregulation. Compared with the regulatedEuropean financial systems of the postwar period, mostEuropean countries have been liberalizing their financialservices sectors. This trend began in the mid-1960s andaccelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time,...