Contents 1 Improve and Globalize Tags 2 Forbes 25 3 Improvement Drive 4 Gibberish 4.1 Industries 5 Company Lists - Link Farm

[edit] Improve and Globalize Tags

This article is largely a list of companies and contains little in the way of encylopaedic content.

I suggest an overview is given of the industry, descriptions of the major business areas (banking, insurance, investment management etc.) and main article links to relevant pages to reduce duplication. The lists should be removed or limited to top 10's also sources must be given to allow independent verification.

The globalize tage reflect that this article is very US-centric and totally ignores aspects of global financial services such as credit unions and saving clubs etc.

What say you? simonthebold 10:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Forbes 25

This was the original text. It's not the largest financial services firms, it's just the largest firms. I don't know what that's supposed to show, it should probably have been accompanied by a mention of their market share in the industries they operate.--Jerryseinfeld 04:07, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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To illustrate this, these (according to Forbes magazine) are the top 25 companies in the world, ranked by a balanced mixture of profit (technically income) revenues, market capitalization, and assets:

Guide: Company name (industry)

• Citigroup (financial services)
• General Electric (holding company, but has large financial services division)
• American International Group (financial services)
• ExxonMobil (oil)
• Bank of America (financial services)
• Royal Dutch/Shell Group (oil)
• BP (oil)
• Fannie Mae (financial services)
• HSBC Group (financial services)
• Toyota Motor (cars and financial services (owns a bank))
• Verizon Communications (telecommunications)
• Wal-Mart (retail stores)
• ING Group (financial services)
• Royal Bank of Scotland (financial services)
• Berkshire Hathaway (holding company, main division is financial services)
• BNP Paribas (financial services)
• International Business Machines (computers)
• Altria Group (argicultural and brand name holding company)
• General Motors (cars and financial services, it makes twice as much profit from financial services then it does cars)
• Total (oil)
• Freddie Mac (financial services)
• UBS (financial services)
• JP Morgan Chase & Co (financial services)
• Wells Fargo (financial services)
• DaimlerChrysler (cars)

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That listing is supposed to show the possibly suprising phenomenon that, out of the top 25 largest companies in the world, how many are financial services companies.

[edit] Improvement Drive

The article Grameen Bank is currently nominated to be improved on Wikipedia:This week's improvement drive. Support this article with your vote.--Fenice 17:19, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gibberish

I have removed the nonsense shown below as I feel it is unlikely to help anyone. Most likely it was cut and pasted from some website where it may have had context. Hopefully someone can come up with a better introduction to the types of industry in financial services. Simonthebold 18:03, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Industries

"Industries" in the "industry". Product set of financial services firms. The core products are transaction services (customers are consumer and corporate), trading and derivatives (consumer and corporate), debt & equity structuring (structured finance) (corporate), asset management (consumer and corporate), financing (debt & equity) (consumer debt, corporate debt & equity), advisory (on M&A and integrated in other products, for example structured finance and derivatives) (corporate), insurance (consumer and corporate).

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Hmmm, good call on the gibberish, but now the Industries info doesn't make a lot of sense once you get down to EDC & GE. Secretagentwang 20:42, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

There's got to be a distinction between financial products and financial planning consultants. That categorization is useful to understand the way in which the various branches/services etc. are operating around the globe. If I were to very broadly categorise in as few categories as possible, then what would they be? Context is important, of course, but for a start, I would suggest this: "Financial Products Providers, Financial Planning Consultants." In these two categories, the whole gamut has been covered. Please let me know if I have erred. My name is "Objective?" Thank You.

[edit] Company Lists - Link Farm

Do we really want this article to mainly consist of company lists? It has become a link farm and there is no definition on what constitutes a "notable" company. As long as we're on this path, this article is likely to be nothing more.

I propose we take one of two approaches:

• Remove all internal and external links to specific companies, and retain the links to related topics (insurance, etc.) so the article is encyclopedic and ceases to be advertising.

OR

• Set a very specific bar (top 5 or 10 companies - for insurance, by revenue; for banks, by assets managed, etc.) and enforce that so we don't wind up with a list of 1000+ links here.

--Pearrari (talk) 14:26, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to remove the internal and external linkfarm which seems to have turned into a giant 'See also' list. Any desired list of banks can be made into its own separate article or people can refer to List of banks. Barkeep ^{Chat | $} 17:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)