In recent years financial conglomerates have been established throughout Europe. This horizontal diversification has attracted a great deal of attention in the banking and insurance sector, and has alarmed the supervisory authorities and the European Commission.
Financial Conglomerates: New Rules for New Players? gives a broad, innovative survey of the following aspects:

it analyzes different sets of definitions of financial conglomerates, groups, consolidation criteria, etc., testing the practical effects of these definitions on the basis of a detailed relational database;
although the benefits of financial conglomerates are straightforward, it is clear that quite a number of potential risks cannot be ignored;
moreover, the differences in regulation of the solvency requirements for banks, insurance companies and investment firms are analyzed in order to look for a possible approach for calculating the necessary level of solvency for financial conglomerates.

Audience: Required reading for practitioners as well as academic researchers in both the financial and the insurance markets. Strategic as well as regulatory perspectives are relevant disciplines.