Sofia A. Salomatina
"Investment", "Deposit", "Universal": West-European Banking Patterns in Russian History, 1864-1917,
in: Ekonomicheskaja istorija. Ezhegodnik (Economic Hystory. Yearbook). 2001, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2002, p.172-205.

Summary
This paper asserts a new resolution to the old puzzle of Russian banking history: how to explain the dichotomy of deposit and investment commercial banks in Russia. The author arrives at the conclusion that there were two types of competitive banking institutions. Deposit banks served regional business networks by discounting exchange bills. The emergence of these institutions was an answer to the regional business elite's demands. Investment banks were agents of the securities market that emerged as institutions that served the government market and mortgage securities, and gradually, from the 1890's, turned into major private industrial investors. By the 1910's, through crises and failures, Russian banks gradually started to turn into universal investment banks with the optimal proportion of risks and reliability in its operations' structure, where investment projects went with traditional discount-loan operations.

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