Sir, Ray Soifer writes: “No wonder banks’ shares generally trade at a discount to their stated book value. No one really knows what their true net asset value is — too often, not even the management.” “Picture of risks in banks’ portfolios is still fuzzy” January 17.
Of course! How could it be otherwise? Banks are currently most certainly paying more for consultants to understand their regulator’s risk/required capital management, than what they pay for the risk management of their own portfolio. Because, how is one to understand risks in banks’ portfolios when the risk weights used by regulators are, to top it up, portfolio invariant, since to do these portfolio variant would be, as they confess, too difficult for them to do?
Could it be because when something is too out of line, it is sort of easier to attribute an intelligent motive to it? Sir, again it all reminds me so much of Chance gardener a.k.a. Chauncy Gardiner
@PerKurowski