Giants with nowhere to hide

In a time of fierce competition partly prompted by technological change, commercial banks are struggling hard to make decent margins from traditional business. Diversification into investment banking and derivatives trading has led to as many failures as successes. Suzanne Miller reports on alternative views on how the banks might turn an honest penny.

“Just look out of your window and you can see a banking crisis,” David Llewellyn, banking professor of Loughborough University, recently told an audience of financiers in Bangkok. Banks have once again been as surprised as everyone else to find themselves in the thick of a financial crisis, this time in south-east Asia. Have they abandoned customary restraints and become chronically risk-addicted?

Banks that have lent heavily to Asia are being blamed for bad credit decisions and for threatening the very fabric of the financial system.

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