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DealBook: Moody’s Downgrades 12 British Banks

October 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Scott Eells/Bloomberg NewsMoody’s Investors Service headquarters in Manhattan.

PARIS — Moody’s Investors Service on Friday downgraded its ratings on 12 British financial institutions, including Lloyds TSB Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland, saying it believed Prime Minister David Cameron’s government was less likely to provide support for the institutions in the event of failure.

It cut the senior debt and deposit ratings on the 12 lenders, citing its “reassessment of the support environment in the U.K., which has resulted in the removal of systemic support for 7 smaller institutions and the reduction of systemic support by one to three notches for 5 larger, more systemically important financial institutions.”

Both Lloyds TSB Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland fell into the arms of the state during the 2008 crisis and likely would have collapsed without that support.

Mr. Cameron’s chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said the downgrades were expected because the government was pursuing the right policy.

“As I understand it,” Mr. Osborne told BBC radio, “one of the reasons they’re doing this is that they think the British government is actually moving in the direction of trying to get away from guaranteeing all the largest banks in Britain, in other words trying to deal with the too-big-to-fail problem.”

Shares of Royal Bank of Scotland fell 2.8 percent in London, while Lloyds TSB Banking fell 3.8 percent.

He said the Vickers Commission report, which called in September for the separation of retail and investment banking activities, demonstrated that the government was serious about overhauling the banking industry.

“In other words,” he told the BBC, “people ask me, how are you going to avoid Britain and the British taxpayer bailing out the banks in the future? This government is taking steps to do that, and therefore credit ratings agencies and others will say, well actually, these banks have got show that they can pay their way in the world.”

Mr. Cameron added that he was “confident that British banks are well-capitalized, they’re liquid, they’re not experiencing the problems that some of the banks in the euro zone are experiencing at the moment.”

Moody’s said British banks’ ratings continued to receive “up to three notches of uplift” from expectations of support, but “it is more likely now to allow smaller institutions to fail if they become financially troubled.” It noted that the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury had all made it clear that in the future the government would be more likely “to make greater use of its resolution tools to allow burden sharing with senior bondholders.”

It stressed that the ratings cuts “do not reflect a deterioration in the financial strength of the banking system or that of the government.”

Moody’s cut Lloyds TSB Bank and Santander U.K. to A1 from Aa3; Co-Operative Bank to A3 from A2, R.B.S. and Nationwide Building Society to A2 from Aa3; and cut seven smaller institutions, as well.

Shares of Royal Bank of Scotland fell 2.8 percent in London, while Lloyds TSB Banking fell 3.8 percent.

R.B.S. is now facing the need for another capital injection from the government, the Financial Times reported Friday. R.B.S. in a statement called that report “speculation.”

Moody’s said four British banks continued to benefit from “a very high likelihood of support” from the government, including Barclays and HSBC Holdings, as well as Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland. It did not change its ratings of Barclays and HSBC.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6b9088182b9a15bf9c6938d4caecb379

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E.C.B. Looks Poised for Action at Thursday Meeting

October 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Trichet will hold the last press conference of his eight-year term Thursday in Berlin, amid speculation that the bank could cut its benchmark interest rate just three months after raising it.

Some analysts doubt that the E.C.B. will reverse course so quickly, but they are nearly unanimous in thinking that it will need to do something at its monetary policy meeting Thursday in response to deteriorating conditions in the euro zone economy and the banking system.

Recent events have highlighted the bank’s role as the only institution in the euro area with the flexibility and resources to respond quickly to a crisis that seems to grow more acute by the day.

Euro zone governments are struggling to approve a bailout fund in a politically charged process that has focused an improbable amount of international attention on parliamentary debates in Finland and Slovakia. Yet the fund, at a proposed €440 billion, or $585 billion, already appears inadequate for the growing scale of the crisis.

At the same time, fears about European banks seem to be coming true. It has been reported that Dexia, a French and Belgian institution, may break up because of its exposure to Greek debt.

“We are coping with the worst crisis since World War II,” Mr. Trichet said Tuesday during an appearance — his last as E.C.B. president — before the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.

Analysts at Royal Bank of Scotland see a better-than-even chance that the E.C.B. will cut its benchmark rate to 1.25 percent from 1.5 percent Thursday, but they acknowledge that it is not an easy call.

The E.C.B.’s governing council, which includes the central bank chiefs of the 17 members of the euro zone, is divided and has been sending conflicting signals. Earlier this year, Mr. Trichet clearly flagged rate moves in advance.

“When I listen to what the governing council members have said in the last few days, there is no consensus,” said Michael Schubert, an economist in Frankfurt for Commerzbank.

One argument in favor of cutting rates Thursday is that Mr. Trichet will want to do a favor for his successor, Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Italy. Mr. Draghi, who will take office Nov. 1, will be under pressure to establish his credentials as an inflation fighter, and he risks undermining his credibility if he oversees a rate cut immediately upon assuming the presidency.

But inflation hard-liners like Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, are likely to argue vehemently against a rate cut even though evidence is building that Europe is going into a recession. Inflation in the euro area probably rose to an annual rate of 3 percent in September, according to official estimates, well above the E.C.B.’s target of about 2 percent.

The E.C.B. might seek a compromise and take less controversial steps to show it is not watching idly as the banking crisis becomes more acute. It could revive its purchase of secured debt issues by banks, for example, or extend low-interest lending to strapped institutions.

None of those moves will solve the debt crisis, though, nor would a large rate cut, for that matter. But the E.C.B. is very unlikely to take more radical steps, like printing money to buy huge quantities of government bonds, relieving the banks of damaged assets.

Mr. Trichet signaled Tuesday that political leaders should not expect the E.C.B. to rescue them. “We cannot substitute for governments,” he told the parliamentary panel, before going on to mention how much he is looking forward to retirement on the coast of Brittany.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/business/global/ecb-looks-poised-for-action-at-thursday-meeting.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Europe’s Big Central Banks Hold Interest Rates Steady

September 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The move came shortly after the Bank of England decided to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 0.5 percent to help the weakening British economy, amid concerns that Europe’s debt crisis might become more of a drag on growth.

The E.C.B. left its main rate at 1.5 percent, as expected, a level that some analysts consider to be too high now that indicators are pointing to stagnant growth or even a recession in the euro area, and sovereign debt worries threaten a renewed financial crisis.

The E.C.B. raised rates from a record low of 1 percent in April and again in July, each time by a quarter of a percentage point, to combat what it said were signs of inflation. Analysts would have been surprised if the bank reversed itself. But many expect the bank to signal that it will not raise rates again for some time.

“We expect the ECB to indicate it has reached an early halt to its policy rate hiking cycle,” economists at Royal Bank of Scotland said in a research report Wednesday.

The E.C.B. president, Jean-Claude Trichet, was to hold his customary news conference at 2:30 p.m. Frankfurt time.

As he nears the end of his term leading the E.C.B., the bank is on the front lines of the most acute crisis the euro has ever seen. Some European banks are struggling to borrow on the interbank market because of questions about their solvency; the E.C.B. is keeping them afloat by providing them with emergency low-cost loans. The E.C.B. is also buying Spanish and Italian bonds on the open market to stem pressure on their borrowing costs, which threatened to reach ruinous levels.

Some analysts argue that the bank needs to go further and aggressively cut rates to avert recession, even though it only recently raised rates.

“The E.C.B. is the only policymaking institution with any room to maneuver. It should use it to the full,” said Marie Diron, an economist who advises consulting firm Ernst Young. “But,” she wrote in an e-mail, “there is a risk that due to divisions within the governing council, the E.C.B. will not take such steps.”

Several members of the council, including Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, are known to oppose the E.C.B. intervention in bond markets, arguing that the bank has exceeded its mandate by becoming involved in government fiscal policy.

Mr. Trichet’s press conference will be his second-to-last such appearance before he turns over the job to Mario Draghi, the governor of the Bank of Italy, at the end of October. He will certainly be asked about the E.C.B.’s stance toward interest rates, its bond-buying program, and whether it might take further steps to provide banks with emergency cash.

But with events moving so swiftly, analysts at the Royal Bank of Scotland said, it may be difficult even for Mr. Trichet to accurately predict what the E.C.B. may do.

“Given how quickly the situation has deteriorated over the past month, we do not believe the E.C.B. will be in a position to provide much credible forward-looking guidance,” the R.B.S. analysts wrote. “Like many it has been surprised by the relentless pressure by the market to continue testing the system.”

The British central bank, in addition to keeping its main rate at a record low, also left its asset purchasing program at £200 billion, or $319 billion. Some economists had said earlier that the Bank of England could resume its bond purchasing program, or so-called quantitative easing, as early as this week, to try to stimulate the economy by injecting more money into the market.

In Britain, inflation has put the squeeze on consumers, who in turn curbed spending because of concern about rising unemployment and cuts in public spending. Businesses also became more reluctant to invest and more recently exports have suffered as economies in the country’s biggest market — the euro area — slowed.

“One by one, Britain’s engines of growth are coming to a halt,” Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec in London, said. “If indicators continue on that path it’s feasible we’ll see more quantitative easing soon.”

Goldman Sachs said on Monday that it believed the Bank of England could resume buying bonds in the coming months, most likely in November.

Other central bank policy makers also have discussed the need for more stimulus. In the United States, some Federal Reserve policy makers said last month that the current economic slowdown would justify “a more substantial move.” Fed officials have discussed the option of buying more government bonds and other tools, and were to take the issue up again at their next meeting later this month.

Adam Posen was the only member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee who repeatedly voted in favor of more quantitative easing, arguing that the economic recovery was not strong enough to withstand the large public spending cuts underway, the biggest since World War II.

George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, admitted in a speech on Tuesday evening that the economy was growing more slowly than predicted in March. But he said it was still flexible enough to withstand the government’s wide-ranging austerity measures.

Mr. Osborne said Britain’s economy was “not immune from events around the world” and that “These are very unsettling times for the global economy.”

Signs that Britain’s economy was weakening have mounted. House prices fell in August, the first drop in four months, and consumer sentiment declined. Dixons, the electronic goods retailer, said Wednesday that sales fell 7 percent in the three months through July 23, and Thorntons, the British chocolate maker, reported a full-year loss compared with a profit a year earlier.

Manufacturing increased 0.1 percent in July from the previous month, according to the Office for National Statistics. Some economists predict the Bank of England would keep interest rates at a record low for another year after Britain’s economic growth slowed to 0.2 percent in the second quarter.

Julia Werdigier reported from London.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e403f896d66c7d00c70974131edd0bed

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Central Bank Props Up Spain and Italy, for Now

August 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Spanish and Italian bond prices rose and their yields fell on Tuesday after the central bank stepped in for a second day to buy their sovereign debt, part of expanded efforts to prevent the European debt crisis from deepening in two of the largest economies in the euro currency zone.

The central bank’s move, much more ambitious than its previous forays into the bond market, has set off a debate about how far the bank legally can go under its charter. According to bank insiders and analysts, the answer seems to be: as far as it wants.

But the bigger questions may be how much intervention the central bank’s balance sheet can sustain — and how much help it will get from European governments. The pan-European bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, is politically loaded and months away from having new money brought to a vote by member nations in the euro area.

In late trading Tuesday, the yield on Spain’s benchmark 10-year government bonds was down an additional 0.1 percentage point, at 5.019 percent. It had reached a record high of 6.458 percent on Aug. 2. The yield on 10-year Italian bonds, meanwhile, fell Tuesday to a one-month low of 5.143 percent.

To keep Spanish and Italian bond yields at sustainable levels over the long term will be a huge challenge for the European Central Bank, as investors test the bank’s resolve.

“Once they have started buying it will be difficult to stop buying,” said Jacques Cailloux, chief European economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

As it has when buying Greek bonds in the past, analysts say, the central bank will probably portray its interventions as a means to maintain control over interest rates and hold down inflation — not as a rescue of any particular country, which is forbidden by treaty.

And analysts expect the bank to make a show of taking as much money out of circulation as it spends buying bonds, to avoid the appearance the central bank is printing money or flooding the economy with cash through so-called quantitative easing of the sort the United States Federal Reserve has resorted to in recent years.

On Tuesday in Washington, the Federal Reserve stopped well short of such a move, instead indicating it would keep rates low through mid-2013. But it said it might again resort to quantitative easing, if economic conditions did not improve.

The European Central Bank, too, is loath to acknowledge any limitations on its monetary policy arsenal. And, in the worst case, it might even engage in quantitative easing if it saw signs of deflation.

“We do what we judge necessary to be sure that we deliver price stability,” Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the central bank, said last week, repeating a phrase he has used often.

Confronted by a fundamental threat to the euro or to Europe’s banking system, the central bank might have no choice but to take further action.

“They will do whatever it takes because they will be forced to,” Mr. Cailloux said. “There are no technical impediments to buying unlimited amounts” of bonds, he added.

But that might require effectively printing money. Previously the central bank has intervened only in the much smaller markets for Greek, Portuguese and Irish bonds, spending 74 billion euros ($105 billion).

Some analysts say the bank may need to spend more than 10 times that to maintain control over yields on Spanish and Italian debt. If so, it might have trouble fully offsetting the purchases by paying banks interest to park money at the central bank, as it has done so far.

The bank’s purchases of Spanish and Italian bonds on Monday and Tuesday, reported by traders but not officially confirmed by the central bank, came amid broader market turmoil after Standard Poor’s downgrading of American debt late Friday.

The central bank felt forced to respond because last week the cost of borrowing for both Spain and Italy soared to record highs, with yields on their 10-year bonds topping 6 percent — a level that could raise the countries’ interest payments to ruinous levels and threaten to undermine the entire euro union.

And despite the bank’s efforts, there were growing signs on Tuesday of heightened tensions in the banking system. Money market indicators showed that European banks’ reluctance to lend to one another was approaching levels not seen since the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt and Raphael Minder from Madrid.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/business/global/insiders-see-no-limits-to-european-central-banks-arsenal-in-debt-crisis-fight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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DealBook: Britain Backs Higher Capital Rules for Banks

June 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

LONDON – Britain’s government is supporting a proposal that would require banks to hold more capital and partly shield retail operations from investment banking.

George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, is expected to endorse the plan when he addresses several hundred bankers and other financial professionals at a speech in London on Wednesday evening, a government official said. The proposal, which would most likely increase operating costs for banks, was initially made in an interim report by the government-backed Independent Commission on Banking in April.

Mr. Osborne’s backing makes it more likely that the rules, which include a so-called ring-fencing of consumers’ deposits from potential losses at investment banking operations, will be made law. If the country adopts the regulation, it would put Britain ahead of the United States in pushing through changes to separate more clearly the traditional deposit-taking services from the riskier but more lucrative trading operations.

But questions remain about which parts of a bank’s operations should be included in the ring fence, a rule intended to limit the need for future bank bailouts by taxpayers. For example, it is unclear whether wealth management or derivatives to hedge currency movements would be inside or outside the shielded operation. The banking commission is expected to present its final report to the government on Sept. 12.

Since the interim report in April, British banks have lobbied to limit the parts of the bank that would be shielded from the rest of the business and would have to be financed separately. Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, which is majority-owned by the government, told a parliamentary committee last week that the proposed rules would actually have the opposite of the desired effect and increase risk in the banking system.

British “banks are focused on ensuring financial stability and supporting economic recovery,” the British Bankers’ Association said in a statement on Wednesday. “A significant part of this work is ensuring the right safeguards are in place for customers’ deposits.”

Shares in Britain’s biggest banks, including HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, fell on Wednesday in London.

Mr. Osborne is also expected to support the commission’s proposal to require larger banks, like Barclays, to hold at least 10 percent of equity relative to their risk-weighted assets, more than the 7 percent detailed in the so-called Basel III agreement to overhaul international bank regulation.

But the commission also said that because investment banks operate globally, British banks should not be subject to different capital rules than those agreed to internationally.

The commission was created to find ways to strengthen the British banking system and avoid large losses for taxpayers in any future financial crises. It also had a mandate to improve competition in the British retail banking sector, which became more concentrated over the last three years.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/britain-backs-higher-capital-rules-for-banks/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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A Star Faces Barriers to Deutsche Bank’s Top Job

June 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A banker with a pied-piper quality, Mr. Mitchell persuaded Mr. Jain and 500 others to leave secure jobs at Merrill Lynch in the mid-1990s to help him transform Deutsche Bank from a slumbering financial institution focused mostly on traditional lending to German companies and individuals into a global powerhouse that generated half its profit from trading and deal-making. At the peak of his success, in late 2000, Mr. Mitchell was killed in a plane crash.

In building Deutsche’s investment bank, Mr. Mitchell formed the template for the global universal bank that has since been emulated — for good and ill — by Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, JPMorgan Chase, UBS and Barclays.

At 48 — about the same age as Mr. Mitchell was when he died — Mr. Jain controls all of his former mentor’s empire, and more. In a given quarter, those operations may produce as much as 90 percent of the banking giant’s profit. Now he is confronting the same obstacle that confounded Mr. Mitchell and prompted him to start looking for another job in the days before he died.

As a non-German speaker and Wall Street product, Mr. Jain is facing an uphill battle to succeed Deutsche Bank’s chief executive, Josef Ackermann.

More diplomat than banker, the Swiss-born, German-speaking Mr. Ackermann and the Deutsche board have resisted persistent shareholder demands that the bank put forward a succession plan before Mr. Ackermann’s contract expires in 2013.

All of which has enhanced the view that Mr. Ackermann sees it as his legacy to crown a successor in his own statesmanlike mold — perhaps Axel A. Weber, the recently departed president of the German central bank. There has been much talk of Mr. Weber’s becoming chief executive or coming in to share the job in some way with Mr. Jain.

Ultimately it will be a board decision, and the bank may well decide to anoint Mr. Jain. But the delay, institutional shareholders say, runs the risk of alienating Mr. Jain and might cause him to jump to another investment bank.

“In Germany, no one can imagine an Indian working in London who does not speak German being the C.E.O. of Deutsche Bank,” said Lutz Roehmeyer, a portfolio manager at LBB Invest in Berlin and a large shareholder. “But Deutsche Bank is an investment bank now, and Mr. Jain deserves to run it.”

On a narrow profit and loss calculation, that may be so. But even though Deutsche’s risk-taking was not as outlandish as that of others, the bank was an enthusiastic participant in the United States mortgage boom and it is being sued for $1 billion by the United States government, which contends that its mortgage unit engaged in fraud and deceived regulators to have its loans guaranteed.

While the majority of the alleged fraud took place before Deutsche acquired the mortgage operation, Mr. Ackermann and the Deutsche board may well be wary of choosing a bond and derivatives technician at a time when the practices of all major banks are still being scrutinized.

People who have spoken to Mr. Jain say that he recognizes this is a board decision and that his priority is to keep the profits coming. But, these people say, the delay and the possibility that Mr. Ackermann may not support him for the job have had an effect.

During a brief interview on Tuesday, Mr. Jain took issue with rumors in the market that his relationship with Mr. Ackermann — never close to begin with — had cooled and that he might leave the bank.

“I have been given a huge new opportunity to integrate the investment bank and I am very excited about that,” he said. “As for my relationship with Joe, it is as good as it ever was in almost 15 years of working together.”

Mr. Ackermann declined to comment on the question of his successor, but in the past he has made it clear that the decision to pick the bank’s next leader is the board’s responsibility — with his advice, of course — and that his contract runs until 2013.

By all accounts, Mr. Jain wants to complete the job that Mr. Mitchell and he started 16 years ago. Highly ambitious, with sharp bureaucratic elbows and an even sharper, although impatient, intelligence, he can claim that on his watch Deutsche’s investment banking side did not fall into the trap of so many of its rivals, allowing Deutsche Bank to weather the global financial crisis without assistance, public or private.

Moreover, Deutsche Bank’s United States fixed-income business was, for the first time, ranked No. 1 last year by the closely watched Greenwich Associates investor survey — beating those of institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch in their own backyard.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/business/global/15jain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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DealBook: British Bank Panel Suggests Changes to Limit Risk

April 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

LONDON — British banks should hold more capital and better shield individual customers from losses in other parts of their business, a government-backed commission said on Monday.

The proposals stopped short of any significant new regulations, like requiring a full split of retail and investment banking, which some banks had feared.

Instead, the commission said retail units, which take consumer deposits, should be isolated for protection, or ring-fenced, to allow them to survive even if other parts of the banks need to be wound down.

Shares in British banks were mixed in London on Monday, with Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland rising and HSBC falling.

“The report has been extremely generous to the banks,” said Roger Nightingale, a strategic adviser to hedge funds and institutional investors in London.

The proposals, by the Independent Commission on Banking, go further than recent changes in the United States in trying to separate more clearly the traditional deposit-taking services from the riskier but more lucrative trading operations.

The commission also said larger banks, like Barclays, should hold at least 10 percent of equity related to risk-weighted assets, more than the 7 percent detailed in the so-called Basel III agreement to overhaul international bank regulation.

But the commission also said that because investment banks operate globally, British banks should not be subject to different capital rules than those agreed to internationally.

The proposed ring-fencing of the retail business means that banks with both retail and investment banking units, including Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, would have to finance the two businesses separately and not move capital from one area to the other.

The proposed changes would increase a bank’s financing costs, the commission said, but not as much as a complete split of retail and investment banking. And any costs would be more than offset by the benefit of “materially reducing the probability and impact of financial crises,” the report said.

Simon Gleeson, a partner at the law firm Clifford Chance, in London, said the proposed changes could prompt banks to take on more rather than less risk, or to raise prices for retail customers as the cost of doing business increases. “All of this would make the operating of retail banks more expensive,” he said.

The proposals are part of an interim report and are not definitive. But they were seen as Britain’s most important response to the banking crisis, which has left two of the country’s largest banks in government hands. Before the release of the report, Barclays and HSBC had threatened to move their headquarters abroad should new rules be too punishing, which they argued would leave them at a disadvantage to rivals elsewhere.

John Vickers, who heads the commission, rejected claims that the commission bowed to bank pressures. “These are absolutely far-reaching reforms,” Mr. Vickers said at a news conference in London. “They could be absolutely transformative.”

The commission, which includes former banking executives, was set up by the government in June to suggest ways to improve stability and competition in Britain’s banking industry after the financial crisis. The Treasury is expected to receive a final report in September.

George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, welcomed the interim report as a “very, very good piece of work.”

Under the proposals, any retail banking operations would have to be run as a subsidiary of the larger banking group. The subsidiary would have to stick to its own capital ratios, but any capital above that could be moved from the retail banking business to other activities in the wider group. The banking group would also be able to continue selling financial products across its units, for example offering investment banking advice to retail banking clients.

“It would help shield U.K. retail activities from risks arising elsewhere within the bank or wider system,” the report said. “It could curtail taxpayer exposure and thereby sharpen commercial disciplines on risk taking.”

The commission said its recommendations sought a middle ground between the radical step of separating retail and investment banking and simply relying on higher capital requirements to increase the stability of banks.

In the event of the collapse of a bank, the commission suggests that claims of depositors should be ranked higher than those of unsecured creditors. “It’s amazing how so many senior debt holders came out whole” from the banking crisis, Mr. Vickers said.

The commission also recommended making it easier and less expensive for customers to switch between British retail banks as a way to increase competition.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/british-bank-panels-report-less-radical-than-feared/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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