Euromoney 30th anniversary: Heroes and villains
In the following pages the chief executives of 12 of the largest and most powerful banks and investment banks in Europe and America share with Euromoney their thoughts on the future of financial services, reflect on the highlights of their own careers and on the changes wrought on the industry by 30 turbulent years, and answer questions about their institutions' present strategies and performance.
Some of what they have to say is familiar, much is challenging. For example, HSBC's John Bond points out that, for all the brave talk of globalization of financial services, many banks have withdrawn over the past 30 years from international markets to concentrate on domestic strategies.
While present orthodoxy holds that consumer banking is an inherently better business for shareholders than investment or wholesale banking, with more stable, better quality revenues, Paribas' André Levy-Lang wonders whether this is merely the consequence of different accounting conventions. He also points out that many of the same shareholders who recently urged Paribas to de-emphasize investment banking and concentrate on the specialist and consumer financing operations of Compagnie Bancaire, were urging the exact opposite just a few years ago.