UNIVERSAL BANKING AMERICAN-STYLE

American corporate banking has undergone enormous change over the past two decades. That change reflects a combination of long-run competiti ve pressures and short-run performance problems that led US banks and their regulators to a new American version of global universal banking . From the perspective of the scale and scope of banks, these changes represent a convergence of US banks to international norms in banking. At the same time, the US version of universal banking entails novel l inkages between banks and financial markets in the pursuit of enhancin g bank-customer relationships. These new linkages give universal banki ng a new complexity and richness which banks outside the US will incre asingly imitate.