Journal Article
Measures of global bank complexity
Goldberg, Linda S.; Cetorelli, Nicola (2014-12)
Size and complexity are customarily viewed as contributing to the too-big-to-fail status of financial institutions. Yet there is no standard accepted metric for the complexity of a ?typical? financial firm, much less for a large firm engaged in global finance. This article provides perspective on the issue of complexity by examining the number, types, and geographical spread of global financial institutions? affiliates. The authors show that standard measures of institution size are strongly related to total counts of affiliates in an organization, but are more weakly aligned with other ...
Economic Policy Review , Issue Dec , Pages 107-126

Journal Article
Evolution in bank complexity
McAndrews, James J.; Cetorelli, Nicola; Traina, James (2014-12)
This study documents the changing organizational complexity of bank holding companies as gauged by the number and types of subsidiaries. Using comprehensive data on U.S. financial acquisitions over the past thirty years, the authors track the process of consolidation and diversification, finding that banks not only grew in size, but also incorporated subsidiaries that span the entire spectrum of business activities within the financial sector. Their analysis shows that bank holding companies added banks to their firms in the early 1990s, but gradually expanded into nonbank intermediation ...
Economic Policy Review , Issue Dec , Pages 85-106