At a CEPR conference in London on 4th-5th February 1998, David Folkerts-Landau of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell stated that many European banks had responded to declining rates of return in European banking in the early 1990s by “targeting middle-market Asia”.
French banks have been repeatedly warned by the Bank of France to cease making international loans at margins that are too low to cover all-in costs. Crédit Lyonnais is known to be the French bank most significantly exposed to Asia. See McCauley and White (1997). Technology allows both the unbundling and the rebundling (pooling) of risks.