Page 6 - The Banks Summary (H)

The second exercise is to view the following three

questions in relation to the actions of the banks

In the spirit of irony perhaps the tongue-in-cheek use of

the first three rules of business may thus be applied to

the banks and their actions:

1. Don’t get caught - HSBC

2. Use someone else’s money - Barclays

3. Blame someone else - WFB

Although all the banks under consideration in this paper
could rightly fall foul of all three rules especially the first

one, as they were all caught, cumulatively they all, with
perhaps the exception of TSB, engaged in multiple

variations of the last two rules.

Part of the problem was the changing regulatory

environment that forced the banks to spilt the investment

banking from their retail bank. From this stemmed

compliance pressures which if not difficult to meet were

certainly influential in tactical developments for example,

RBS’ GRG unit and its PPFAs