The Glass–Steagall Act was repealed in 1999, chiefly through the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.
Glass–Steagall was part of the Banking Act of 1933, passed during the Great Depression. Its best-known provisions separated commercial banking from investment-banking activities and restricted affiliations between deposit-taking banks and securities firms. The aim was to protect deposits and reduce conflicts of interest after widespread bank failures.
Over subsequent decades, regulators and financial firms gradually weakened the separation through legal interpretations and new corporate structures. Congress eventually enacted the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, also called the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. President Bill Clinton signed it on November 12, 1999.
The phrase “repealed Glass–Steagall” needs a small qualification. Gramm–Leach–Bliley repealed Sections 20 and 32, which restricted affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms; important parts of Sections 16 and 21 remained. That is why historians often describe 1999 as the repeal of Glass–Steagall’s core affiliation barriers rather than the disappearance of every provision associated with the original law.