Andrew Bailey: Bank capital – debating again Speech by Mr Andrew Bailey, Deputy Governor of Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive Officer of the Prudential Regulation Authority at the Bank of England, at Barclays’ 2016 Financial Conference, London, 9 March 2016. *  *  *  Bank capital has been in the news again recently, or at least parts of the news – there are some other things going on. There are probably two reasons for this “news”: first, because we have entered another phase of highly uncertain conditions in financial markets, which has had a strong impact on the market value of banks; and second, as authorities we are pushing on with implementing the post-crisis reforms to capital standards, and in doing so we have reached a point where some of the important building blocks are now being put into place. Today, I am going to reflect on and draw some conclusions for what I would call the bigger picture, namely what sort of banking system are we seeking to create, what are we not doing, and why not. I will draw on the detail, and there is no shortage of that, but this is not a talk about the detail of bank capital, you can find that in plenty of other places. Another objective is to tackle some urban myths of today.
Christian Noyer: France’s banking industry in 2007 – key trends Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the French Banking Commission, at the presentation of the 2007 Annual Report of the French Banking Commission, Paris, 26 June 2008. *  *  *  Welcome to the working breakfast organised for the press on the occasion of the publication of the Commission Bancaire’s 2007 Annual Report today. I would like to take this opportunity to speak to you about the major trends seen in the banking industry in 2007. Naturally, the main development last year was the subprime crisis. I will also speak about the lessons learned from the crisis for the future. Even though the French banking system’s overall exposure to the risks revealed by the subprime crisis turned out to be less severe than in other G10 countries, our banking system was still affected, as can be seen in the decline in profitability. On a more encouraging note, however, French banks managed to maintain satisfactory solvency ratios, testifying to the system’s resilience and its ability to cope with a very large-scale and complex crisis. However, in addition to the impact on business conditions, the financial crisis calls for an examination of the robustness of some of the banking activities that developed so rapidly over the last ten years. These activities have complicated the task of risk management in major banking groups.