I had a summer job in 1997 at a large Insurers (kill me), and people on my team would spend at least half an hour a day waiting for networked, dependent Excel files to calculate after opening them.

Since then, I have always suspected it was still a problem in large financial institutions, although the few times I mentioned it to people they looked at me blankly. Now I feel vindicated!

Out of interest, does the Financial Industry use any analogues to source control and unit testing for spreadsheets?