J. L. M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) |So where do we go now? Do we stop extending banking regulation or do we keep including more conditions? We look to the US, but actually the debate already started a few months ago in Europe. Many experts (some from the ECB itself) warned about the complexity of the measures taken up to now and about the risk this implied for the sector’s stability. And for the financing of the economy.
The implentation of Basel III is taking its time. The adjustment periods are very long and drawn-out; the refinement of the concept of capital will not be completed until 2022. We have also seen that the implementation of the TLAC requirements, ratified at November’s G20 meeting, will not happen quickly. Until these adjustments are completed, the banks and the markets will still feel there is no break from regulation.
In the last six years, the Spanish banking sector’s return on equity (ROE) has fallen by 6.8 percentage points from 12.1% to 5.3%, mainly due to increased capital requirements. But the drop would have been even greater if it had not been for the ECB’s policies. This ROE data coincides with a complaint from Banco Popular chairman, Angel Ron, who said the regulation affecting the financial industry is “abrasive.”
MADRID | May 9, 2015 | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | Spanish banks are still the central pillar of the Spanish stock market: seven lenders account for nearly 40 percent of the IBEX-35 index.
Project Syndicate | By Raghuram Rajan | The bankers do not seem to have internalized a fundamental axiom of modern finance: risk emanates from the assets that a bank holds.
NEW YORK | Financial Times’s interview with Jamie Dimon was intended to create momentum. JP Morgan’s chief executive is now attacking new banking rules by Basel committee, trying to convince against the new regulation to water down Basel III the same way the major US banks have lobbied in Washington to water down Dodd-Frank Act, Obama’s new set of rules after the financial crisis. Dimon’s argument goes like this: the Basel…