4.11 SUMMARY
This chapter has described the global financial crisis. A way of looking at the events contributing
to the crisis was presented in the form of interlinked vicious circles labelled “foreclosures”,
“negative equity”, and “housing surplus”. In addition, the behaviour of the key participants
in the crisis, namely the investors, mortgage lenders, banks and regulators, was examined.
Investors, particularly those from China, were seeking higher yields than those provided by
the apparently risk-free or close to risk-free US government bonds or government-guaranteed
bonds, which at the time were providing very low returns. Hence there was considerable
finance available for investment in what appeared to be an attractive subprime market. At
the time several boards of investment banks were characterised as being dysfunctional in that
they fell into or adopted “group think” where members reached consensus without critically
testing and evaluating ideas. This behaviour was exacerbated and perhaps driven by dominant
personalities, commonly CEOs, looking for and expecting acceptance of their ideas without
question. Hence, investment took place without rigorous challenge. While it was thought that
the securitised credit intermediation would reduce risks for the banks by passing risks to
investors it was discovered that when the crisis struck the majority of the holdings were on
the books of highly leveraged banks. As a consequence several commentators have argued
that regulation should be designed to produce a separation of “narrow banking” from risky
investment bank trading activities, a reimposition of the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial
and investment banking. After the financial crisis a number of organisations looked to
both the causes and ways of preventing a similar occurrence. Lord Turner identified the major
failure, shared by bankers, regulators, central banks, finance ministers and academics across
the world, as omitting to identify that the whole banking system was fraught with market-wide,
systemic risk. A number of initiatives are now under way at a macro level to both comprehend
and address systemic risk in the banking sector, but clearly this a monumental challenge due
to its scale in terms of the number of stakeholders and geographical reach. At the micro or
business level there is recognition that businesses need to improve their corporate and risk
management practices. The link between poor business performance and poor governance and
risk management has been made by many. For instance, Hector Sants observed: “The impact
of companies lacking robust risk management and good governance will, as we have seen,
impact negatively on company’s long term investment performance”. With regard to board
conduct, Warren Buffett wrote in his 2009 Letter to Shareholders:
In my view a board of directors of a huge financial institution is derelict if it does not insist that
its CEO bear full responsibility for risk control. If he’s incapable of handling that job, he should
look for other employment. And if he fails at it – with the government thereupon required to step
in with funds or guarantees – the financial consequences for him and his board should be severe