Events in the late 1960s reshaped the securities industry. Trading volume increased sharply, with the number of shares changing hands on the New York Exchange growing from five million a day in 1965 to twelve million a day in 1968. This expansion overwhelmed the mechanisms brokers used to transfer securities and keep records, which relied heavily on paper and pen. They responded by purchasing computers, but these machines were expensive and demanded more sophisticated management than most firms could provide. Accordingly, many companies botched the process. Moreover, trading volume declined sharply in 1969 and 1970, cutting deeply into brokerage revenue. These factors combined to create a crisis that had, by the end of 1970, forced nearly a sixth of the nation's brokerage firms out of business. Yet this crisis also opened the way for large, integrated companies, which, by the 1990s, dominated the securities industry and conducted business on a scale unimagined thirty years earlier.

For all its notoriety and controversial character, the history of Swiss banking secrecy remains largely unexplored. This article traces the crucial phases of its development. It reveals that the maintenance and reinforcement of banking secrecy represented a major objective of Swiss authorities throughout the twentieth century, and exerted a substantial influence on Swiss domestic and foreign policy. It demonstrates that, contrary to popular opinion, the institution of Swiss banking secrecy did not arise from a desire to protect the funds deposited in Switzerland by Jewish victims of Nazi persecution but rather had substantially different origins. Moreover, this article shows that Swiss banking secrecy gave rise to tensions between Switzerland and the Great Powers, especially during and after World War II, when it poisoned relations between Switzerland and the United States.

Spanish shipping firms relied on various strategies to direct the growth of their industry from 1860 to 1930. The diffusion of specialist shipowners during the second half of the nineteenth century was the result of both an increasing demand for maritime transport and a heavy rise in capital requirements owing to improvements in technology. During the first third of the twentieth century, some of these specialized firms became large companies through internal growth and/or horizontal combination. They achieved their gains without resorting to formal vertical integration, choosing instead to build social networks with other shipowners based on trust and loyalty. This approach allowed them to create intermediate arrangements, thereby diminishing transaction costs. When strategies of formal vertical integration were adopted, they primarily involved activities similar to shipping, such as ship brokering, consignment, stevedoring, and other maritime services. To document these trends, this article analyzes the organizational structure of Spain's twenty largest shipping concerns.