미국에서의 은행업과 증권업의 겸영 제한

Section 27-1 of the Commercial Banking Act of Korea provides that commercial banks are able to conduct all the businesses related to banking. Section 2-1-1 also defines core banking businesses as consisting of deposit takings and loan makings. Legal interpretations of these statutes are not always easy as they seem, especially in terms of banking businesses. For example, the issuance of certificate deposits to the public in general is clearly consistent with the definition of a deposit taking. However, it may be also regarded as the sales of securities, thereby subject to the Act on the Capital Market and Investment Banking. Another example may be the sale of a repurchase agreement. It can be either a core banking activity or a securities trading. When analyzing deeply about ancillary activities related to banking, people may be more confused by the these concepts. In principle, commercial banks are allowed to conduct activities closely related to banking as well as core banking activities. However, nobody can suggest correctly the outer scope of 'activities closely related to banking.' An old rule by the Financial Services Commission regarding this issue was uncertain due to its breadth and vagueness. For instance, the rule enlisted the sale and purchase of treasury bills as permissible activities by commercial banks. The critical question was that whether these activities were core banking or ancillary banking. Same problems may happened when reading the sales of derivative products or the issuances of electronic cashes. More serious were securities underwriting and merchant banking activities. Were those activities permissible because they were simply enlisted under the rule? Fortunately, these issues are no longer problematic since the rule was abolished completely on November 18th of 2010. Prior to the Great Depression in 1929, almost all of banks had been conducting investment banking as well as commercial banking activities. Thus, even though a commercial bank happens to conduct a investment banking activity nowadays, it seems natural at some times and under certain situations. However, it should be noted that the Banking Act of 1933 in the U.S. and the 1950 Commercial Banking Act of Korea clearly separate commercial banking activities quite from investment banking activities. Since then, thus, commercial banks have not been allowed to participate in investment banking with some exceptions. In this situation, people should know correctly when and to some extent investment banking activities by commercial banks are exceptionally permissible. In addition, after the global financial crisis caused by sub-prime mortgage problems, the U.S. Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July of 2010 which contains the Volker Rule and thus limits the above exception more severely. The Volker Rule is to prohibit proprietary trading, investment in hedge funds and private equity funds by U.S. commercial banks. This paper deals with all these issues more systematically. Precedent cases and other statutes resulting in the Volker Rule are analyzed deeply, which include the Glass-Steagall Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and other prominent case laws regarding permissible investment banking activities by commercial banks. Detailed issues are continued from part II of this paper.