Lifetime achievement award - Josef Ackermann: Banking industry cannot shy away from making tough choices
I must say, the last couple of years have felt like a lifetime.
I never thought in my 30-plus years in banking that I would see such enormous changes as those that our industry has witnessed in the past 24 months. We’ve learnt some tough lessons: the risks in the banking system were greater, and more complex, than anything we imagined. The last estimate of the IMF for losses in the banking industry as a result of the financial crisis was $4 trillion; the banking system is more interconnected than we thought possible – in other words, systemic risk is much greater than we imagined; we have seen government intervention in both banks and markets that is unprecedented at any time since the 1930s; and the public’s trust in banking, and in...
