The Boston Globe offers an interesting column suggesting the likes of Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon.com--perhaps even Wal-Mart--will someday want to jump into the financial services industry, specifically the mutual fund industry (mutual fund news).

Some non-traditional firms are eying financial services. Wal-Mart's Sam's Club, for example, will soon start making small-business loans of up to $25,000 for its members. Recall that Sears bought Dean Witter way back in 1981. The idea that a retail-oriented firm can make hay with financial products has obviously been around for quite awhile. In Boston anyway, the idea of a sale of privately held Fidelity Investments is constant water cooler talk.

These days, the potential buyers that come up most often include names like Wal-Mart, Microsoft and Yahoo, rather than the traditional financial-services powerhouses. This is perhaps a form of wishful thinking. But at a time when traditional banks are somewhat discredited, it may be ripe for some outside the box diversification.

"The next logical step would be for" high-tech consumer companies, especially that run financial sites, to "put their popular financial information into a brokerage or fund platform that allows investors to tie the information they get from the financial research services directly into transactions. They are much more likely to buy a big brand name than to go through trials and errors building their own brand." It's an interesting concept.

For more:
- here's the column

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