But Europe remains more fragmented (see chart 2): mergers have been held up by clashes of national interest, as well as by differences in legal systems, military doctrine and business culture.Even where agreement has been reached on pooling equity, smoothing out these differences can take a disproportionate amount of management time, negating some of the savings that might have been made.
"We would stick with mutual funds, index shares or other pooled-equity-type investments.
That gives them more income-generating holdings relative to the same pool of equity.
Obviously, higher global stock prices will enlarge the pool of equity that can facilitate the recapitalisation of financial institutions.
The CREF stock account, the world's biggest pool of equity managed as one entity, and other Teachers' money matches the combined assets of the next two big pension organizations, the California Public Employees Retirement System, known as Calpers, and the New York State Common Retirement Fund.
They used a common pool of equity capital to cushion all loans, although the risk profile for auto loans or home mortgages is far different than for loans to Brazil or a Phoenix office park.
That makes it more costly to take over the firm by tendering for its newly enlarged pool of equity.At the same time, 60% of American firms have a staggered board, under which different groups of directors are elected in different years.
The shrinking pool of equity partners is selling short at a steep cost to clients as well as the next generation of firm talent.
Eight years ago, I co-authored a paper at the Kauffman Foundation, Women and Angel Investing: An Untapped Pool of Equity for Entrepreneurs.
Institutional investors reasoned at that time that the dividends on a diversified pool of equities would grow sufficiently to offset the loss in immediate income.
