Genealogy of American Finance by Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla (review)

Robert E. Wright and Richard Sylla have prepared a useful document for those scholars interested in studying the evolution of giant organizations that currently dominate American finance. The study was initially inspired by the identification by Charles M. Royce, of The Royce Funds, of a lacuna in the contemporary reference sources that provide details about the corporate antecedents of leading financial institutions. With the support of Royce, the Museum of American Finance engaged Wright and Sylla to compile genealogical charts listing from their date of formation to present all of the component companies that comprise the top fifty financial enterprises in terms of asset size operating in the United States. The alphabetic coverage spans from Ally Financial (formerly General Motors Acceptance Corporation) to Zions Bancorporation. It also includes major foreign financial groups operating in the Unites States, such as Deutsche Bank, HSBC North America, and Utrecht-America Holdings.

The concise introductory section links finance’s, past and present. The authors’ provide a lucid sketch of the major milestones in US banking history. They also provide insight into the types of holding companies that have facilitated financial organization growth. Through well-designed maps and tables, the reader learns who is the largest (JPMorgan Chase with $2.4 trillion in assets) and who is the smallest (Synovus Financial, with $26.5 billion in assets). They also learn who is the oldest (RBS Citizens Financial, formed in 1727 as the Royal Bank of Scotland), and who is the youngest (Charles Schwab, in 1971). What is surprising is that the country with the largest number of banks among the top fifty is Spain, which has three (BBVA Compass Bancshares, Popular, and Santander Holdings USA).

The primary focus, however, remains centered on the analysis of the fifty subject companies. Their individual genealogical charts identify each acquired bank and its period of existence. While many of the banks trace their origins to the nineteenth century and before, a cursory survey of the charts seem to indicate a more rapid pace of concentration of ownership in recent decades. The genealogical data is further contextualized with accompanying succinct discussions of individual corporate histories. Besides bank leaders, the volume also includes interesting pictures of such artifacts as buildings advertising matter and checks and currency.

Another important aspect of this study, I believe, is its marshalling of useful information for future research directed at extending the theory of the firm. The great scale and scope of the industry’s leading firms are corporate attributes that might provide a basis for testing the hypotheses implicit in such models as, for example, the one put forth by the late Alfred D. Chandler. The continued utility of his influential research has been questioned in recent years because, among issues, it was limited to manufacturing, did not address service businesses, deemphasized governmental influences, and cut off during the 1970s before the strong expansion of globalization and the information economy. The work of Wright and Sylla create an opening for the beginning of the building of a new synthesis for explaining how the evolution of particular strategies and structures enabled some firms to grow large and to transform one of the nascent information economy’s most vibrant sectors: finance. While the Chandlerian analytical paradigm might serve a useful starting point in pursuing this line of inquiry, such research would likely generate new insights about the unique factors that optimize the management of complex business enterprises in information-rich service industries.

The genealogies prepared by Wright and Sylla are effectively time-lines that could be useful in planning case studies that have long been a distinguishing methodology of business history. The value of synthesizing the findings of many corporate studies in structuring broad scholarly generalizations rests partly on this method’s ability to assess deeply the dynamic interaction between multiple factors over long time horizons. Richly detailed narratives perforce reduce the...