AMERICAN BANKING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21462, 8 April 1933, Page 7

AMERICAN BANKING

LESSONS FROM THE CRISIS ADOPTING BRITISH SYSTEM Olio salient point emerges from th? recent financial crisis in America, and that is that it marks the end of "smallman" banking in the United States, said Mr. J. Collan, representing Equities, Limited, a Sydney, London and American group of financial agents, who was a through passenger by the Makura, whicn arrived at Wellington this week, en route from Chicago to Sydney. "I am positive," Mr. Collan said, "that after the present trouble, America will resort to tho British

system of branch-banking."

Americans were always suspicious of trusts, and possibly would not view with favour the placing of the national banking system into the hands of a few, like England, where tho "big five" controlled the major part of the business, Mr. Collan continued, but, nevertheless, he was convinced that the United States was in for an era of branch-banking, possibly with Government supervision, or with Government, participation by means of partial ownership. Mr. Collan said that he was speaking with some authority when he said that in the past few years there had been about 10,000 bank failures in the United States. But now he was quite convinced that all these crashes, which had been due -to "small-man" ownership, were definitely a thing of the past.