The big idea: For banks, the accelerated trend in globalization meant they had to provide a range of commercial and investment banking services to clients, and they had to do so in all the places their customers were doing business. Increasingly, customers banked outside of their home countries. Additionally, most investment banking activities, especially sales and trading, benefited from economies of scale, so banks became more profitable as the volume of services and transactions they provided increased.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-deutsche-bank-found-alternative-ways-for-profitability-under-basel-iii-regulations/2014/03/07/48cbd3b0-a316-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html... more...