2  According to the October Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices, moderate fractions of banks continued to tighten standards and terms for loans to small firms, though the net fractions doing so generally continued to decline from the peaks last fall.
The Survey of Terms of Business Lending indicates that spreads on small loans and loans extended by small banks (both proxies for loans to small firms) have increased significantly during the first three quarters of 2009. 2  BIS Review 145/2009  been urged by regulators) to hold larger buffers of liquid assets than before.