Bank consolidation and interlock collapse fractured American corporate elites’ political cohesion.

Evidence

Meanwhile, a wave of bank mergers reduced the number of commercial banks dramatically, and most large cities lost their major local bank to a handful of acquirers (particularly Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase). As a result, the cities’ local power elite no longer had a regular connecting point. Chu & Davis (2013) found that the interlock network had largely collapsed by 2012, as boards shunned the well-connected directors they had previously sought. Mizruchi (2013) describes how this and other factors led to a fracturing of the American corporate elite. Changing from a densely connected class able to act cohesively to influence state policy, business executives in the United States had become increasingly hapless and incapable of locating and acting on common interests, such as health care, taxes, investment in infrastructure, www. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 107

Categorization

• QUESTION: This suggests questions about what replaced local banks as community elite connectors, and whether digital/institutional connectors fill that vacuum.
• SHARE: For anyone studying corporate boards or elite sociology, the collapse of the interlock network as a measurable civic structure is a striking finding.
• XREF: connects to: Market-centered finance dissolved the cohesive corporate elite class. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 112; Takeover markets and institutional investors drove shareholder-value restructuring of corporations. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 31; Hostile takeovers in the 1980s drove the financialization of corporations — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 49 (+1 more)

Related

• Market-centered finance dissolved the cohesive corporate elite class. (similarity 0.86)
• Market-based finance eroded the network centrality of commercial bank boards. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Market-centered finance dissolved the cohesive corporate elite class. #corroborates (0.85) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 112
• Takeover markets and institutional investors drove shareholder-value restructuring of corporations. #expands (0.78) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 31
• Hostile takeovers in the 1980s drove the financialization of corporations #expands (0.75) — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 49
• Financialization fragments corporate, state, and individual horizons into short-termism #corroborates (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 138