Do the world’s leading banks have a firm grip of the true value of their assets, their true exposure to risk (including the likelihood of their borrowers defaulting) and their own true capital strength? And if they do have such information at their fingertips, are they accurately communicating it into the public domain for the benefit of regulators and shareholders?

Such questions ought really to be top-of-mind for any politician or regulator who is seeking to re-regulate the banking sector in the wake of the global financial crisis. They are also questions which—depending on the answers—might cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results of the recent European Union “stress tests” designed to confirm the capital strength of 91 European banks and their ability to survive another downturn.

I would go straight to pdf on this stream of conciousness waffling piece of drivel from some years ago ... (sic) .....before I hit the whisky ....... while its printing you can enjoy this view of an RAF Tornado on excercise over Loch Sunart ... & yes this is the one that includes the geeky bit about product hierarchy modelling @ the end ... & the 'Banking Transparency 101' insert too; - enjoy!

The New Banking Transparency is inevitably DIY

Sunday, 25 October 2009

We already posted a reference to a presentation by the CFO of UBS at the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch (BASML) banking conference last week. I was alerted to the availability of the RBS one (by Simon Hester) on Finextra here (who BTW slightly over-read or speed-read the presentation in my view, talking about a 6billion sterling technology budget) however the Hester presentation is of real interest, there are some frank confessionals and we see the costs of the APS beautifully elucidated.