Page 152 - Articles Written by JGJ EF DPS

However, as Professor Richard Werner points out: “if Lloyds Bank, with
a balance sheet of £2 trillion, wants to grow 10% a year, it needs to
increase lending by up to £200 billion every year, but it is not going to do
it by going down the labour-intensive route of lending £20,000 to 10
million small firms. By reducing the average scale of banks, we would be
reducing the minimum scale of deals that the banks are interested in”.
(11)

How this impacts upon government policy of stimulating small business
growth is not hard to determine.

However, the BCG said a major challenge awaits in determining just
how those big institutions will be unwound should they pose systemic
risk.

The report noted that banking reforms will continue, despite the general
anti-regulatory climate coming from the new U.S. presidential
administration.

In early September 2017, TSB(UK) boss, Paul Pester commented:

“The other banks have learned nothing from the financial crisis: they

continue to treat customers with contempt despite having to be bailed
out by taxpayers.” (12)

For Pester banks had lost touch with the local communities they were
meant to serve:

“They are still overcharging, still keeping customers in the dark about
how much they are really paying, and still conniving in family debt
problems by lending money irresponsibly.” (12)

More and more calls are being made to hold banks and their chief
executives to account as highlighted by Christy Goldsmith Romero:

“Holding Wall Street CEOs to account, on the other hand, will be much
more difficult, as the lack of cases has shown. "Our nation cannot afford
to take our eye off the ball when it comes to crime or other illegal
practices inside banks that require law enforcement response," Sigtarp's
inspector-general Christy Goldsmith Romero” (13)