"When I got here, the bank was a time bomb. We had £700 billion of banking assets and £300 billion of wholesale funding, half of which was short-term with an average tenor of two months. The bank was in danger of going bankrupt"
Lloyds chief executive António Horta-Osório reflects on the challenges he faced when he joined the bank in 2011
(see International rescue: How Horta-Osório relaunched Lloyds)
"When we think about our business model, there was a time when we worried about our competitors’ ability to replicate what we have. Now there isn’t much likelihood of anyone doing that through big M&A deals. And to compete with us in 100 places, any bank growing organically would need to plant its flags, gather deposits, make loans. That’s a long, tough slog, and it just doesn’t look practical for anyone to undertake in this environment"
Mike Corbat, CEO of Citigroup, is determined to make the most of his bank’s unique breadth
(see Corbat reconsiders Citi’s global resources)
"The crisis laid bare the fragility of a funding model that is exclusively dependent on banks. And when this funding became unavailable, the SME sector was hit hardest. To remedy this, we need to find ways to diversify, deepen and reintegrate capital markets in Europe"
Benoît Coeuré of the ECB admits that a currency union does not automatically lead to a union of financial markets