In turn, the collapse of CLF had contagion effects on financial and non-financial firms that had exposures to the conglomerate as well as to other regional economies. What has turned out to be our domestic financial crisis certainly underscored (if ever there was doubt) the urgent need for modernising financial sector legislation and upgrading financial regulation and supervision.
To be fair, Government had adopted a program of regulatory reform as early as 2004. However, the implementation of the program was somewhat slow perhaps in part, because of the misplaced perception that there was no urgency.