Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s there was discussion about consolidation of banks creating a barbell effect, a handful of extremely large banks on one side and then thousands of smaller banks on the other side with few middle tier banks; between 2008 and 2012 community banks have been disappearing and there has been an increase of midsize and regional banks; however the recent BB&T-Suntrust deal has industry experts thinking about whether we’ll return to this barbell effect which American Banker explores in this piece. Source
