[1] These are also called full-service financial firms, although there can also be full-service investment banks which provide wealth and asset management, trading, underwriting, researching as well as financial advisory.
A treatise by Jakob Riesser, the director of a Berlin bank, argued that the German universal banking system possessed beneficial characteristics that allowed it to efficiently provide inexpensive capital to industry and promote growth.
Alexander Gerschenkron also advanced the hypothesis that universal banking was critical to Germany's industrialization.
More recently, Emory University economist Caroline Fohlin has questioned the validity of the Gerschenkron hypothesis.
[2] Notable examples of universal banks include Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo of the United States; UBS and Credit Suisse of Switzerland; BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Société Générale of France; Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Standard Chartered of the United Kingdom; Deutsche Bank of Germany; ING Bank of the Netherlands; RBC of Canada.