Financial Conglomerates and the Chinese Wall

While conglomerates bring with them many economic benefits such as diversification of risk and economies of scale they also impose such costs as systemic risk and conflict of interest abuses. This book explores how regulators can ensure that conglomerate regulation is sufficiently strong to eradicate abuses but sufficiently flexible to secure the benefits of conglomeration. The Chinese Wall - a regulatory mechanism aimed at stemming the flow of information from one department in a firm to another and reconciling conflicts of interest more generally - is singled out for special treatment.