To stand a chance, UK must refrain from imprudent risk-aversion and embrace some prudent risk-taking.

Sir, I refer to Martin Wolf’s “The UK’s future depends on improving economic performance” FT, April 15 2023. 

Wolf at the end of it recommended the UK to “reform its pension system, in order to generate more risk-taking capital, create dynamic new businesses.” Why does Wolf not even mention the UK's banks?

From mid 1979 until mid 1980 I practiced at Kleinwort Benson, one of the truly old English Merchant Banks that has since then, as so many others, gone down, disappeared by globalized Basel Committee bank regulations. With the risk weighted bank capital (equity) requirements, knowledgeable and experienced loan officers were substituted by creative equity-minimizing / leverage-maximizing (dangerously creative) financial engineers.

October 2009, in his Economist Forum, Martin Wolf published my: “Please free us from imprudent risk-aversion and give us some prudent risk taking” It began it with “There is not one single reason to believe the world would be a better place because our financial regulators provide additional incentives to those who, perceived as having a lower risk of default, are already favored by lower interest rates, or punish further those who, perceived as more-risky, are already punished by higher interest rates. In fact, the opposite is most likely truer”

Sir, when comparing government debt and residential mortgages with loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs, in terms of how nutritive they could be for the economy, it is not that outlandish to describe it as demand-carbs vs supply-proteins.

In “Credit Suisse: the rise and fall of the bank that built modern Switzerland” FT, March 24, Owen Walker and Stephen Morris write the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, later rebranded as Credit Suisse, was born out of Alfred Escher’s determination to develop a railway network across the Alpine nation that would link northern and southern Europe. 

Sir, would that Alpine railroad have been built, with a Basel Committee imposing risk weighted bank capital/equity requirements with decreed weights 0% government, 30% residential mortgages and 100% risky projects? 

Would the banks in the City of London have reached the stars with such regulations?

Sir, dare ask Martin Wolf to dare answer that.

@PerKurowski

Where would the City of London be if in the 19th Century it had been placed under the thumb of a Basel Committee?

Sir, I refer to your “The City must not be forgotten in Brexit talks” September 29. In view of the City’s real existential problem, I find it a bit irrelevant 

Creative financial engineers tricked or ably lobbied bank regulators into accommodating their wishes for leverage maximization/equity minimization, by introducing risk weighted bank capital requirements nonsensically based on that what’s perceived as risky is more dangerous to bank system than what’s perceived as safe.

That caused loan officers to allocate credit not as it used to by means risk adjusted interest rates but to allocate it by means of risk adjusted returns on equity. If the City of London is to survive as one of the prime banking centers of the world it needs to get rid of that distortion.

FT, without fear and without favor dare to think what would have been of the City of London if in the 19th Century it had to operate under the thumb of Basel Committee inspired risk adverse regulations?

PS. And if in 1910 that savvy loan officer George Banks had been asked about risk-weights, Tier 1 capital and CoCos, I am sure he would have gone to fly a kite.

What kind of tariffs is protectionist Michel Barnier thinking of imposing on banking and financial services provided by the City of London to Europeans?

Sir, Mehreen Khan’s, Jim Brunsden’s and Sofia George Parker’s write thatin reference to that “the EU would have more to lose from cutting off the City of London than Britain would” Michel Barnier said: “This is not what we hear from market participants, and it is not the analysis that we have made ourselves.”“Barnier dismisses UK hopes of special market access for London after Brexit” April 27.

Sir, I must confess that Michel Barnier does not qualify as my favorite EU Brussels technocrat, but with this he certainly proves himself to be a protectionist, completely in the hands of the European financial intermediaries (the aluminum and steel producers) and with little consideration to all those European consumers of financial services that might prefer using the services and the legal framework provided by the City.

What kind of tariffs is Barnier thinking of imposing on banking and financial services? Has Michel Barnier really been authorized to impose on behalf of all the European Unions his will on all Brexit negotiations?

Sincerely, I do not think Barnier has thought this thru. He might be setting off a real European capital flight to London. 

@PerKurowski

Boris Johnson, if you want to help small digital companies in London, then you'd better travel to Basel than to New York

Sir, Gillian Tett writes about Boris Johnson, the major of London, going to New York in order to look for finance sources for small digital companies, start-ups, and who find access to finance difficult in a city like London that has so many banks, “The British tech industry needs a homegrown cash boost” February 13.

Why does not Boris Johnson travel to Basel and ask the Basel Committee to stop allowing banks to hold less equity when lending to those perceived as “safe” than when lending to “risky”, since that must clearly de-facto erode the interest of banks in lending to “risky” small businesses… like these small digital companies.

With regulators like Mark Carney there is no future in finance for the City, or for the rest of the economy for that matter

Sir, John Gapper writes that Mark Carney, the new “Bank of England governor, has arrived from Canada with a dose of can-do spirit”, “Carney is wise to nurture the City´s future in finance” October 31.

“Can-do spirit”? Ha! There is nothing as far from a can-do spirit than capital requirements for banks which are higher for what is perceived as safe, than for what is perceived as risky. These not only guarantee that banks will not finance the future but mostly refinance the past, but also guarantee the kind of distortions that will make it impossible for the banks which are not in the shadows, to survive.

How can we have reached a point where we can write about “a knowledge industry that has been vital to growth and trade since the 19th century” blithely ignoring there is no way that 19th century banks could have done what they did, with current regulations.

Let me try to explain the regulatory lunacy again, in terms of knowledge. If banks know (or believe they know) the risks, and adjust for these in interest rates, size of exposures and other terms, what business have regulators adjusting for exactly the same “know” in the bank capital?

The role of a banker is to stop his bank from failing”, while the role of a regulator is to see how to stop bankers from failing to stop their banks from failing, and, if banks fail, to see that the hurt will be contained as much as possible. In other words: Though a banker might very well look at credit ratings, a regulator must not look at these, but at how bankers look at credit ratings. Why is it so hard for Mark Carney and his colleagues (and John Gapper and his colleagues) to understand that?

PS. From Edward Dolnick’s “The Forger’s Spell” I extract that the psychologist Leon Festinger once marveled: “A man with conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point”. Does this apply to me, or to the bank regulators and Financial Times journalists, or to all of us?

Why must UK say “No!” to EU on a bonuses cap, without presenting any decent counterproposals?

Sir, I refer to your editorial “Diplomatic fallout from EU bonus cap” March 1. 

Solving the absolutely valid concerns about excessive bonuses paid in banks, by means of capping the bonuses to staff to a maximum percentage of their salaries as the European Parliament proposes, only introduces another distortion… on the road to overmedication 

What I would suggest doing, and thought it might seem to be similar regulatory distortions to you, is in fact reducing other distortions that influence the bonuses paid. 

First, since tax-deductibility is in itself a source of distortion that favors big bonuses, I would limit how much remuneration a banker can get in order for it to be a tax deductable expense, 

And secondly, I would eliminate those extremely low capital requirements for banks for exposures to what is considered as infallible, since these impede the existence of sufficient shareholder´s compensation requirements which can keep the bonuses in check. 

I would of course also do the latter as you know, because the minimalistic capital requirement for what is “safe” and which thereby discriminate what is perceived as “risky” is in fact, on its own, the greatest source of distortions which makes it completely impossible for banks to help allocate economic resources efficiently. 

Why must UK say “No!” to EU on a bonuses cap, without presenting any decent counterproposals?

But FT, are you now not happy with ECB wanting to shrink the City?

Sir, you seem to be complaining about ECB wanting to shrink London´s importance as a financial center, “Trading places, the City and the ECB” December 4.

You have me a bit confused, was that not what you wanted to happen? In your editorial “Gain the advantage” of November 16, 2009 you certainly seemed not mind the City shrinking and on May 22, Martin Wolf, in “Why Britain has to curb finance” spoke about UK regulators having “an influence on the world economy out of proportion to the country´s size”.

Change of hearts eh? Or is it that you suddenly remembered your name?

Right battlefield, wrong combatants!

Sir John Plender in “Rules will decide the New York vs London Battle”, April 7, considers that one reasonable safe bet is that a new Basel agreement… will provide the basis for a level playing field on capital and liquidity” though “where the balance will fall between the two financial centres on all this is anyone’s guess”. Are we going to fall again for the same trick? It was with the excuse of reducing regulatory arbitration between banking centres that Basel created the regulations that served as growth hormones for the big banks. It is not about New York against London, Basel might be the battlefield, but the combatants are the too-big-to-fail banks and the underdogs, the too-small-to-matter-to-the-regulators banks.

Financial Times, is not the City your home team?

Sir in “Gain the advantage” November 16 though you accept that London will still be an important centre you are certainly not cheering up what I expected would be your home team. The arguments you give of stricter global regulations and the concerns of being at the mercy of fickle finance for tax revenues have little to do with the international importance of the City.

I am not a Londoner but if I was I would be cheering the city asking it to forget Basel with all its stupid anti-risk biases and ask my banker to look into themselves and bring out again all those merchant-bank instincts and traditions that made the City great to begin with. If there was ever a moment for professional risk-taking bankers this is it!

Free us from imprudent risk aversion and give us some prudent risk-taking.

It is a great plan but what about its implementation?

Sir in “Gain the advantage” November 16 you analyze what could take the place of finance in Britain and you suggest world-class education, avoiding punitive taxes on business and helping new businesses to flourish. What a plan! Unfortunately I guess most countries will develop a similar strategy but very few will really achieve the results that make them stand out. What would you suggest in terms of implementation? Or is this a trade secret?

Go City of London go!

Sir what caused this crisis, as I have so repeatedly written to you about over the years, were the regulators in Basel executing the mother of all interferences in the risk allocation process of the markets. 

Not only did they appoint the credit rating agencies as Thee Official Risk Surveyors but they also empowered them by concocting minimum capital requirements for banks that covered an incredible range from 8.3 to 1 to 62.5 to 1 with all of it depending on the ratings. 

In this respect when Martin Wolf in “Why Britain has to curb finance” May 22, refers to UK regulators having “an influence on the world economy out of proportion to the country’s size” he is either too parochial or he still completely misunderstands what has happened. 

Also a sheer reference to a “light touch” in the context of financial regulations would be almost laughable if not for the sad and serious consequences of the very heavy handed and truly relevant regulations that from Basel hit the world, London included.

Frankly the UK cannot afford to curb anything, less it wants to be left out completely. And the Financial Times should be the first to know that. 

Go City of London go!