“AS banking develops and becomes concentrated in a small number of establishments, the banks grow from modest middlemen into powerful monopolies having at their command almost the whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small businessmen and also the larger part of the means of production and sources of raw materials in any one country and in a number of countries. This transformation of numerous modest middlemen into a handful of monopolists is one of the fundamental processes in the growth of capitalism into capitalist imperialism; ...”

Banks now take up radically new functions, e.g., that of the stock exchange – managing the issue, sale and repurchase of shares and bonds. “The result is, on the one hand, the ever-growing ... coalescence of bank and industrial capital and, on the other hand, the growth of the banks into institutions of a truly ‘universal character’.”