-
The future of Royal Bank of Scotland’s ambition as a global investment bank will be decided in the coming weeks. Don’t write the firm off. RBS was not strong in the threatened business lines anyway. It remains a top player in debt. If it decides to make a go of it, RBS has a good chance of thriving as a debt-based investment bank.
-
If the European Parliament is writing bail-outs into CRD IV, what happened to the last four years of political and regulatory debate?
-
Defining liquid assets is always going to be a problem; the whole concept is flawed. The best regulators can do is use the Supreme Court’s standard on obscenity – “I know it when I see it”, in the words of Mr Justice Potter. Results otherwise are likely to prove perverse.
-
As RBS takes the knife to its global banking and markets division, buying the equities platform would be an ideal way for one of the emerging forces in global investment banking to enter this business, writes David Rothnie. The problem is there are few candidates willing or able to take it on.
-
The dawn of 2012 brings new hope — and new fears. The sense of foreboding in financial markets is pervasive, but sentiment is self-fulfilling. Investors, bankers and funding officials alike must approach the year with determination and calmness, or the troubles besetting markets will only get worse. There are many good reasons to feel confident, as well as to worry. EuroWeek highlights five of each.
-
The ECB is going to be the only bank that grows this year. It therefore needs to start acting like one. That means getting its vast warehouse of repo collateral back out to a market that desperately needs it.
-
Investment bankers at RBS might once have been able to argue that building a global investment bank was the best deal for taxpayers. Not any more. In the current climate, ditching that ambition is the right thing to do.
-
The Basel Committee is right to warn local regulators about capital relief deals that seek to game the system. But more transparency in the market would be a big step towards safety, without restricting legitimate risk transfer.
-
The ring-fencing of investment banks from retail lenders is a pivotal moment for the UK’s financial services industry. The measures will help appease the public, but unless investors and issuers are given certainty about how bail-in will be implemented, funding markets will remain closed.
-
Policymakers need to be careful about muddying the waters with their public debates over how to regulate banks. But at the same time, banks and markets must come to terms with the fact that regulation has to be dynamic to be effective.