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The paper examines financial conglomerates as an innovative form of integration from different sectors of the world financial market. The authors reveal their features, advantages and risks. The goal of the paper is an empirical cross-country analysis of financial conglomerate identification by financial markets regulators. There is no common approach to such a consolidated entity as financial conglomerate among both researchers and regulators. The blurring of the dividing lines between financial sectors is of great importance too. The development of a conceptual apparatus, the theory and analysis of a financial conglomerate has become of considerable importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The both Chinese and Russian citizens (being «a child and a prisoner» of the centrally planned economy system) were not supposed to manage their risks of poverty at old age during pension period, and as a result, they have no experience of making decisions on the risks of life cycle. During economic transformation from command-administrative to market-oriented pension schemes governments faced many problems requiring urgent solutions. Those challenges made a significant boost to the beginning of large-scale pension reforms in both countries. The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of current pension reforms in Russia and China, to evaluate their possible outcomes comparing them with global trends for further studies of improving the regulation of the public pension system, autonomous pension funds and insurance companies. Research methods: a comparative empirical analysis based on a single algorithm. Results. A relatively short period of existence of a new market-oriented model of pension provision and a transfer of the risk of poverty at old age from the public to an individual level is common to both countries. In China, due to the demographic imbalances created by the state policy of «one family - one child», and in Russia due to a combination of reasons, including the high share of informal employment and low household income, the pressure on the pension systems in the medium and long-term periods will increase. It requires extra sources of fund raising. Because of a series of non-successful pension reforms, the Russian regulator narrows the number of potential participants in pension plans by imposing stricter requirements, reducing the significance of the social pension, motivating to continue the employment during the retirement period. The focus of Chinese pension reform is widening the number of participants (creating new pension schemes for rural residents and civil servants), the development of a pension provision funded component and the inclusion of insurance market mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]