Saturday, November 08, 2014

Banking's culture: Too failed to be big.

Too big to fail was a past theme that the headline turns around in a policy viewpoint for this decade, after the financial melt down during the Bush lame-duck years; this item; this opening quote:

(Reuters) - A top European central banker on Friday put Europe's big banks on notice that it is not only U.S. regulators who will demand large financial institutions change their culture of bad behaviour or face being broken up.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William Dudley, last month told a group of executives at large banks that if they do not reform their culture, by among other things tying pay for bank chiefs to good corporate behaviour, financial stability concerns "would dictate that your firms need to be dramatically downsized and simplified."

The warning appeared to open a new front for regulators trying to rein in banks from the excesses that led to the 2007-09 financial crisis. European Central Bank Vice President Vitor Constancio on Friday said he agreed with the approach.