Big business was also much diversified in Britain. In the early twentieth century, big business was almost synonymous with banking and heavy industry in Germany and France, whereas it included a broader range of activities in Britain. In Germany in 1907 there were twenty banks and twelve firms from the coal, iron, and steel industries among the 45 companies with a paid-up capital of £2 million or more. And, not surprisingly, out of the 24 firms employing 10,000 people or more, 19 belonged to the heavy industries. By 1911 in France, 13 companies out of the 21 with a capital £2 million or more were banks, while 8 out of 11 firms with 10,000 employees or more were coal, iron, and steel companies. Contrast these figures with the distribution of the 93 British firms working with a capital of £2 million or more in 1907, where only 21 were financial institutions (including a mere 6 banks), and only 10 coalmining or metal-manufacturing enterprises. Companies from the heavy industries obviously made up a fair proportion of the country’s largest employers, though not an overwhelming one as in Germany and France: 9 of the 17 firms with 10,000 employees or more belonged to this sector.

Such a low proportion of financial institutions among the largest British companies might appear surprising given the major role played by financial services in the British economy. However, relying on paid-up capital as a measure of size would in this case be misleading. English commercial banks, unlike their Continental counterparts, confined their activities to deposit banking operations—that is, on the assets side, mostly short-term loans, discounts, and investments in highly marketable securities. They thus worked with a much smaller capital, but with larger deposits, than the French and German banks. In 1907 the then largest British bank, Lloyds Bank, had a capital of £3.85 million, as against £10 million for the Deutsche Bank and for the Crédit Lyonnais. Measured by total assets, however, the leading British banks were among the largest in the world in the early twentieth century, though not (as one might have expected) the largest. On the eve of the First World War, five European commercial banks were roughly of equal size, with total assets exceeding £100 million. Three were British: Lloyds Bank, Midland Bank (then called the London City and Midland Bank), and Westminster Bank (then called the London County and Westminster Bank). One was French, the Crédit Lyonnais, and one German, the Deutsche Bank. Six other banks stood a little behind, with total assets between £40 million and £60 million: two British banks, Barclays Bank and the National Provincial Bank; two French banks, the Société Générale and the Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris; and two German banks, the Dresdner Bank and the Disconto-Gesellschaft.