BIS Review 97/2008  1  We at the Central Bank, share in the joy of this occasion with you today. Yet we shall keep an ever-watchful eye on your development, as a watchdog must, to safeguard this country’s reputation for probity as an international financial centre. A central bank always welcomes new ventures; and a failure or two: “pour encourager les autres!”.
Finally, investors may seek to boost returns by employing additional leverage, which can amplify interest rate and credit risk as well as make exposures less transparent. One of the lessons of the financial crisis was that the potential adverse effects of a rapid unwinding of financial imbalances, regardless of the causes, are significantly increased if market participants employ significant leverage.