James A. Leach: “First, let me talk about competition. In case no one has noticed, over the last 2 decades the United States of America…”

“First, let me talk about competition. In case no one has noticed, over the last 2 decades the United States of America has outstripped competitively virtually every Western European country. We organize differently than Europe. We decentralize. In case nobody has noticed, the last 7 years Japan has averaged about 1 percent growth. The United States 2 to 4 times the rate of growth in each of these years in Japan. We organize differently. In terms of speed, in very short order, very large things can occur. We have just witnessed announcement in the last 4 or 5 weeks of the largest financial combination in American history. Reports after the fact indicate that the leadership of the two institutions involved, Travelers and Citicorp, reached a decision in a 6 to 7 week time frame. As financial institutions grow, these percentage restraints grow with them. So we have a circumstance that the larger financial institutions become, the larger the commercial enterprises they can intertwine with. In very, very short order the American commercial landscape as well as financial landscape can change if this kind of approach is adopted. Finally, let me just note that in addition to concentration of ownership that can occur, we are likely to get a concentration of geographic control.”