How it happened.

The article presents information related to international finance. The financial systems of the big economies still look very different from one another. History has left its mark. For example, compare the U.S.' banking system, with its thousands of independent banks, to Great Britain's, where a handful of "clearing banks" dominate the market for small deposits or to Japan's, with its hierarchy of different institutions, each with its own traditional line of business. The pre-transformation market for financial services was divided into segments.