Banking on a better future

Sir John Vickers produced an elegant and sensible Interim Report into the banking industry. He concentrated on two main problems.

How can a country the size of the UK play host to banks with balance sheets collectively  several times the size of the UK’s national income? And how can we have a competitive UK retail banking industry that provides good service and prices for individuals and smaller companies based at home? His first task is to ask how do we handle future banking crises without stressing the UK taxpayers and public accounts too much. He points out traditionally banks had been allowed to gear their capital around 20 times. In other words they could lose up to 5% of their assets before they were insolven...