Under Chinese wall restrictions there is a threat of litigation, leading analysts to have less of an issue with bias in their research. A Chinese wall restriction is used to make sure important and private information is not inadvertently shared or "leaked" and that all clients within large multinational firms are protected. The actual idea stems back decades to the Great Depression, and has allowed the financial services industry to maintain one entity between investment banks and brokerages as opposed to requiring firms to have those two departments be separate entities.