The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday edition that limited competition in capital markets, the consolidation of market influence into our largest financial institutions and their homogeneous approach to risk management, have undermined Canada's capacity to finance and retain its innovations. Guest columnists J. Ari Pandes and Colin Deacon write that this period of consolidation began with a change to Canada's Bank Act in 1987, allowing commercial banks to enter the securities underwriting business. Within a few years, Canada was transformed from a market with no bank-owned public equity underwriters to one dominated by them. In the process, the capital markets lost much of the specialized, regionally focused and industry-specific expertise that the independent underwriters had long provided. Lost competitors included scrappy disrupters such as Gordon Capital, which pioneered bought deal underwriting in the early 1980s, and outcompeted established investment dealers by driving down fees and allowing companies to raise capital more quickly and with greater certainty. In 1986, the TSX hosted 84 operating company initial public offerings. Today, only one operating company IPO occurred over each of the past three years.