Nationalization looms over Myanmar banks, with key executive out of contact

Myanmar’s Financial Institutions Law of 2016 is one of those tracts that bank legal teams are paid to decipher, the detail of its 185 bombastic sections too turgid for hard-charging CEOs to spend much of their time on.

That was before the February 1 military coup that upended the country’s democracy, economy and banking system.

Since then, as soldiers murder with impunity and the spectre of nationalization hangs over a once-dynamic banking scene, the law has become required reading, a portent of what bank executives may have to confront as the system breaks down amid widespread protests.