Guy Debelle: Collateral, funding and liquidity Address by Mr Guy Debelle, Assistant Governor (Financial Markets) of the Reserve Bank of Australia, at the Conference on Systemic Risk, Basel III, Financial Stability and Regulation, Sydney, 28 June 2011. *  *  *  I thank Chris Stewart and Matt Boge for their help in preparing this talk.
Today I am going to talk about a few interrelated issues concerning the banking system: collateral, funding and liquidity. The financial crisis brought into sharp relief the liabilities side of a financial institution's balance sheet, that is, the funding structure. This had previously been somewhat neglected, but the fates of Northern Rock, Bear and Lehmans were clearly affected by the nature of their funding.