Konusu: Editor's Q&A
Nearly eight years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers it might have been expected that fundamental questions about the business models, governance and territorial scope of large banks would have been answered clearly, but that is not yet truly the case. Debates rage on in many countries about ‘too big to fail’, management accountability in banks, resolution planning and conduct issues in the banking sector. What is the ‘safest’ form of international banking and what might shareholders in banks reasonably expect as a long-term rate of return on their investment? When is all this uncertainty going to end? Perhaps it never will for so long as large banks remain as important to the global economy as they are and the political classes throughout the world remain divided on whether this is a good thing. It is also worth remembering that the reform agenda that was born in the financial crisis of 2007–2009 established a very long implementation period – to 2019 and beyond – for many of the regulatory changes agreed upon by the G20 and the Basel Committee. So we are still in the midst of what will no doubt be seen in decades to come as the ‘post-crisis’ period in banking regulation.
Looking forward then, what can we see beyond the implementation of the post-crisis reforms? That depends, of course, in part on whether there is another cross-border banking crisis. It is worth noting in this context that localised banking failures remain commonplace, and with more countries around the world introducing specialised bank resolution regimes there will be further opportunities to test the uses and pitfalls of bail-in and other resolution powers.
The continuing debate about the impact of technology on banks has increased significantly in volume in much of the world in the past year. Forecasts of the eventual eclipse of banks by technology firms seem wide of the mark in the short to medium term, although there is clearly an ‘adapt or die’ threat to many banks in the longer term. One adaptation of sorts that we may well see more of in the next few years is banks acquiring technology firms (or otherwise entering into strategic partnerships with them).
Many of the largest cross-border regulatory investigations into past conduct in the banking sector have drawn to a close over the past year. While for some that signalled the close of a painful and costly chapter in the post-crisis development of the banking sector, it remains difficult to conclude that the threat of further such investigations has gone away.
