BofE Governor in the dark on banking regulation


The management of UK banking/ financial system has become highly politicised reflecting the general Browns government style. This from the meeting yesterday between Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England and the Commons committee. Governor in dark on banking regulation | FT His comments to MPs on the Commons Treasury committee flabbergasted its members. John McFall, the committee chairman, said the lack of communication at the top level between the Bank, Treasury and Financial Services Authority was unbelievable. “The tripartite authorities are a communications black holes, which is worrying.” Continue reading BofE Governor in the dark on banking regulation

New thinking for Risk Management | Deloitte


Risk management has come under the microscope of late, and clearly new thinking is required.  Recently Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England reflected to the weeks and months that it took to work “stress test” models within banks and how that is clearly unacceptable.  He described stress testing as being less “regulatory arbitrage” and more “regulatory camouflage”. (my post summarising Haldane)  (Haldane – BofE pdf) The Deloitte Center for Banking Solutions has a new report out that focusses on providing for an integrated approach across the enterprise. Integrated Compliance and Risk Management Rethinking the approach Unprecedented market turmoil in the industry … Continue reading New thinking for Risk Management | Deloitte

Disaster Myopia and other causes of banks’ problems


Andrew Haldane, Executive Director for Financial Stability, Bank of England diagnoses the failure of bank stress tesing in this speech given at the Marcus-Evans Conference on Stress-Testing.   He speaks of the Oct 87 crash, the LCTM hedge fund 98 failure as well as the 2007/8 crash. Why Banks Failed the Stress Test:  Bank of England pdf He sees three categories of failure: Disaster Myopia Essentially this is positive thinking that increases the longer since the last disaster.  He only somewhat jokingly wonders whether “10 years is the threshold heuristic for risk managers.” Network externalities He speaks of the financial system … Continue reading Disaster Myopia and other causes of banks’ problems