Do Bankers Control Corporations?

Several recent developments have rekindled the interest of radicals and reformers in corporate control and the role of banks in the corporate system: among them, the conglomerate movement of the 1960s, the continued growth of the multinational corporation, and the movement for corporate reform spearheaded by Ralph Nader and his associates and allies. At least as important as these, however, was the 1968 publication of the House Committee on Banking and Currency's report, Commercial Banks and Their Trust Activities: Emerging Influence on the American Economy (hereafter referred to as the Patman Report), which disclosed for the first time that by the late 1960s the commercial banks were managing trust accounts aggregating about $250 billion, heavily concentrated in the larger trust institutions. The 49 leading trust banks were shown to have 5,270 separate holdings of 5 percent or more of the stock of portfolio companies with these larger holdings in many cases paralleled by director interlocks as well.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.