Abstract
The goal of this short paper is to provide evidence on how investment companies have
changed the composition of their balance sheets across the recent financial crisis. For a
large sample of United States brokers/dealers and asset managers, we analyze the
information reported in the filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We
observe that, the firms in the sample have shrunk the size of their assets through
de-leveraging. The crisis though, has not induced firms to change substantially their
financing structures. In particular, inside firms organized as Bank Holding Companies
(BHCs), repurchase agreements do still play a role for fund raising, and this may have
consequences on financial stability. Therefore, the patterns showed in this paper are
important for the policy making inside investment companies.