This essay was originally published in 2013 as part of An Unfinished Mission: Making Wall Street Work for Us, a report by the Roosevelt Institute and Americans for Financial Reform.


In “Beyond Finance: Permissible Commercial Activities of US Financial Holding Companies,” Roosevelt Senior Fellow Saule Omarova explains the legal basis for the expansion of large US financial holding companies’ nonfinancial business activities, and examines their policy implications.

As Omarova writes, “. . . any truly comprehensive and effective reform of financial services regulation must address public policy issues that arise when ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks grow even bigger and more systemically significant by combining finance with commerce.”