For example, it took an investigation by the UK’s Competition Commission in 2000 to establish that the country’s Big Four banks had been operating a complex monopoly on services for small businesses, using their 90 per cent market share to extract £2 billion in annual profit and push their average return on equity up to 36 per cent, by mutually agreeing not to compete.19 If banks’ gambles ever endangered their solvency, the government would have to rescue them with public money.
