Yet, the turmoil in financial markets spurs me to occasionally ask a board member of any of these institutions if they do not feel too big to be managed. The general reply is that simply because the “best and brightest” are part of the company, there is no further need to enhance the management structure, or even look into additional safeguards.
In practice lending has continued to be primarily in the form of short-term loans. Last June such transactions accounted for 35 per cent of the total credit granted to non-financial companies, basically unchanged compared with the preceding years.