Asia’s GFC deals 10 years on – so who won?

The global financial crisis, despite its weighty worldwide name, was really a crisis of US and European financial institutions. Asia was just the place that supplied the capital to save them.

First it was the sovereign wealth funds – China Investment Corporation (CIC) into Morgan Stanley, GIC (Singapore) into UBS and Citigroup, Temasek into Merrill Lynch and Barclays, Korea Investment Corporation (KIC) into Merrill – and then it was the Japanese banks. We are now at the 10th anniversary of MUFG resuscitating Morgan Stanley by writing a cheque for $9 billion and Nomura buying the Asian and European assets of Lehman.