Financial Management 1880-1924

The growth in the scale and scope of business enterprises during the late 19th century and early 20th century, especially in the USA, brought with it an increasing complexity in financial management. As corporations and trusts replaced partnerships, financial management took offered on new importance. The parallel growth in capital markets and the development of new ranges of financial instruments offered companies more and better options for raising capital. Indeed, it could be argued that the rise of large national and international corporations during this time was at least as much the consequence of changes in financial structures and markets as it was of new technology and new methods of organization. Just as in the 18th century the easy availability of capital drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain, so a century later it helped push the USA and its large corporations into the position of leaders of the world economy, and turned Wall Street into the world's largest financial centre.