Industrial Loan Companies: A Growing Industry Sparks a Public Policy Debate
研究了工业贷款公司（ILCs）这一快速增长的金融子行业，它们由商业公司拥有，绕开了银行与商业分离的禁令，并以沃尔玛和家得宝的案例为中心，探讨了商业公司进入银行业对公共政策的影响。
Industrial loan companies, or ILCs, are a small, but rapidly growing part of the financial industry. These state-chartered institutions operate in seven states and have nearly all of the same powers as commercial banks. However, ILCs differ greatly from banks in one characteristic—the type of companies that may own them. ILCs meeting certain conditions may be owned and operated by firms engaged in commercial activities, thus skirting the prohibitions on mixing banking and commerce that apply to virtually all other depository institutions. Commercial ownership is now a prominent topic in banking with Wal-Mart’s recent attempt to open an ILC and Home Depot’s efforts to acquire an existing ILC. At the center of this controversy are such questions as whether commercial firms—retailers, manufacturers, and others —should be allowed to use ILCs to get into banking and what would be the public policy implications of such entry. Those opposing the Wal-Mart and Home Depot proposals, for