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Many observers believe that the banking industry is in a decline following the release of data on commercial banks' share of reported assets and the emergence of a wide range of nonbank competitors such as private pension funds, finance companies and mutual funds. Such evidences, however, do not clearly support such a conclusion. Nonetheless, the changes in market conditions suggest that the banking sector has not grown as rapidly as it might have if banks had not been regulated from providing new products and services.

Regression analysis was used to study the determinants of the geographic distribution of financial institutions in Chicago in 1956, 1960 and 1966. Commercial banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions and currency exchanges were the financial institutions considered in the study. The important variables determined were the number of households in a community and the area where these households are spread. Further research on the geographic distribution of financial institutions in other cities is suggested.

The article reports on the case between the Philadelphia National Bank (PNB) and Girard Trust Corn Exchange Bank (Girard). The Supreme Court's decision in the said case is considered one of the most controversial antitrust decisions ever made. The Court ruled that commercial banking is the appropriate line of commerce in which to measure the competitive impact of a merger under the antitrust laws.