ABSTRACT
To prosper in the computer age, corporations must use every asset and resource strategically, including their computer systems and networks; information and communications resources; and their human, capital, and financial resources. In the late seventies and early eighties, the window of opportunity for exploiting the potential of full-service financial supermarkets opened up. There were an increasing number of other corporations in the United States making plans to transform themselves into financial supermarkets in the eighties. Synergies enabled a few of the largest corporations in America to form highly diversified conglomerates encompassing the entire range of banking, financial, information, telecommunications, and other services. Acquisitions were one of the most important strategies for obtaining the critical mass of computer systems and customers necessary to realize the all-important economies of scale. Diverse customer classes could be reached by these integrated corporate infrastructures, and the resultant national and global multiservice, multimarket financial conglomerates could wring enormous computer systems synergies from these procedures.
