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The article outlines the story of the finance success over the last 30 years, which has been accepted by senior policy-makers and regulators, and the creation and dominance of the big financial conglomerates. It contrasts the story with an account of the harms caused by finance and the conglomerates. It explains why the U.S. President Barack Obama Administration's preference for incremental reform of the conglomerates will not succeed, because the firms will control and undermine the reforms.

This study assesses the interactive effects of product diversification (PD), multinationality (MN), and country involvement (CI) on firm performance, and explores these effects not only in pairs but also in groups. It locates the optimal combinations of these three variables that will help firms to maximize their performance. The results indicate that when these three variables interact in pairs (that is, MN and CI, respectively, interact with PD), their impact on firm performance are opposite, when they interact as a group (MN and CI jointly interact with PD), they mutually strengthen or cancel each other out, and the optimal combinations differ depending on the interactions of PD with MN and CI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the social and cultural factors that influence the consolidation of business conglomerates. A neo-institutional theoretical perspective is used, combined with the social camp concept, to study the institutional distance and dominant relationships in the conglomerates. These aspects are qualitatively applied to 39 direct interviews with micro-cluster tool-making businesses, retailers and support agencies. The paper concludes that there is an asymmetrical accumulation of specific capital, a variety of organizational subcultures, and a predominance of commercial relationships characterized by subordination and domination, rather than the cooperation and interaction that are vital to a cluster's success. The results help understand the dynamics and function of clusters, and open a line of socio-cultural investigation of business conglomerates that goes beyond traditional economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]