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托福閱讀材料銀行與虛無
Banking and nothingness
Europe’s dithering banks are losing ground to their decisive American rivals
Oct 17th 2015 | From the print edition
YOU wait ages for a European bank to send a clear signal on its future strategy and then it gives two in as many days—saying seemingly opposite things. On October 11th the chairman of Barclays hinted its investment-banking unit might be flogged to a rival for want of scale. Investors intrigued by the prospect of a simpler Barclays focused on dull-but-reliable retail banking had but a few hours to ponder the prospect. By the next day reports emerged that the same chairman had plumped for a former J.P. Morgan investment banker, Jes Staley, to be the bank’s next boss.
Seven years after the height of the financial crisis, Europe’s large banks still behave as if they are in the thick of the storm. Plans for radical restructurings are shelved before they are even implemented, often accompanied by management defenestrations—Barclays is one of four big European banks with new leaders. And they have dithered on the most basic questions, for example on how much capital they need or whether to scale back misfiring investment-banking arms.
In this section
Banking and nothingness
Collateral damage
Pegs under pressure
Transfer window
The unstimulating stimulus
Reality cheque
ReprintsEuropean indecisiveness stands in sharp contrast to America’s large banks, which restructured more quickly. Returns are below pre-crisis levels, but their balance-sheets are stronger and management teams bedded in. European banks are still weighed down by non-core units and dud loans; America’s banks have moved on.
Investors have noticed. Most big European banks, including Deutsche Bank and HSBC, trade at a discount to tangible book value: in theory, they would be better off wound up and money returned to shareholders. Bar Citi, America’s largest banks trade at a premium to book value. Shareholder returns for big American and European banks used to track each other; now a chasm has opened up (see chart 1).
In investment banking, Wall Street is relentlessly gaining market share at Europeans’ expense (see chart 2). The business of helping companies raise money on capital markets, trading bonds and generally shifting money around is one that European banks are not keen to give up. But fund-raising clients are deserting the likes of Barclays and Credit Suisse for Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Many factors help explain the disarray of European banks. Profits across all their lines of business have been hit by years of anaemic economic growth; America’s banks have been lending in a more buoyant environment. Interest rates in the euro zone are set to stay lower for longer, making it harder to generate decent net interest margins from lending. Europe’s banking market is fragmented and includes politically controlled lenders, such as Landesbanken in Germany, which sap profits for everyone.
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