Covered Bond Opinion

No part of banking regulation has attracted more controversy than the bonus cap. Now, with the latest round of miserable bank results, pressure on profitability and capital ratios in question, it looks as though it’s doing exactly what was expected.

Barclays' new chief executive is asking shareholders to have a lot of faith. Selling off a profitable part of the business to double down on a less profitable line is a bold call. The market can't be this bad forever, but don't expect the dividend back any time soon.

The banking industry has progressed from the sort of soft, will-they-won’t-they mediocre revenue performance which characterised 2014 and 2015 to hardcore, unambiguous bottom line losses.

Banks are doing whatever they can to attract some tech company glamour. JP Morgan's CFO Marianne Lake claimed the bank was a tech firm at its investor day on Tuesday. Lloyd Blankfein has made the same claim for Goldman Sachs. Now every self-respecting bulge bracket firm has an in-house incubator — even Commerzbank has a couple. Banks are desperate to inject some Silicon Valley sparkle.

HSBC is the ultimate test for the international rules on total loss-absorbing capacity (TLAC). If they don’t work for that shop, then how can anyone be certain they will work elsewhere? That’s why it is worrying that the bank has had to compromise its TLAC plan.

The chair of the supervisory board of the European Central Bank, Danièle Nouy, is absolutely correct in regretting that so much European financial regulation has been done in the form of directives.

The UK has some of the world’s best regulators, but has ended up with some of the most poorly designed regulation. John Vickers’ criticism of the Bank of England shows why politicised regulation can be a problem.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

The sell-off in European banks is terrifying and baffling, all at the same time. GlobalCapital would be first to admit there are still issues — poor growth, weak balance sheets, non-performing loans, defered tax assets, complex forms of untested capital cooked up in regulatory labs – but the continent’s biggest banks aren’t going anywhere. For one thing, they are still too big to fail.

Europe’s banks, with a few notable exceptions, have yet to be hit hard with claims of unethical dealing. But that is likely to change. Thanks to a quirk of the European regulatory system, supervisors need to find some misselling before it is too late.