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4 February 2013updated 22 Oct 2020 3:55pm

Osborne’s ring fence will be made of cheese wire

Power to break up the banks.

By New Statesman

So Osborne is going to “reset the banking system”. A difficult thing to do with trust between Westminster and the banks at an all time low. How is he going to do it?

Well, first there’s going to be a ring-fence: but it’s to be not so much electrified as made of cheese wire – if banks don’t respect it, regulators will be able to break them up.

It’s not just about the fence though – he also plans to make the banking sector more competitive by making it easier to switch bank accounts, and by introducing a new regulator who’ll aim to help out new competitors who want to enter the game. There are also talks over how consumer power can be increased, to hold the banks in check.

There is a plus side for the banks: the leverage ratio won’t be changed beyond 1:33, but as might be expected, they have not taken kindly to the news:

Anthony Browne, the head of the British Bankers’ Association said:

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This will create uncertainty for investors, making it more difficult for banks to raise capital which will ultimately mean that banks will have less money to lend to businesses.

“What banks and business need is regulatory certainty so that banks can get on with what they want to do, which is help the economy grow. This decision will damage London’s attractiveness as a global financial centre.

“Uncertainty” isn’t really the issue though – banks have been under changing regulation since 2008. The main problem for the banks will now be flexibility, according to Credit Suisse analysts (via FT Alphaville):

Reducing options to transfer capital and funding – As we understand it, banks will be under tight scrutiny to implement strictly a ring-fence. This will clearly limit the flexibility for banks when setting-up their ring-fence plans and limit options to transfer capital and funding. Although this is hard to estimate at this stage, this could increase the overall costs of the reform for the industry. We currently do not have an impact in our estimates.

If ring-fence is to work, it needs to be enforced – but as banks make their money by finding their way around such restrictions, a truly impenetrable fence’ll cost. Here is a summary of the estimated hits to the economy via FT Alphaville:

Estimates costs from implementation – The draft legislation published in October 2012 highlighted the following costs for the broader industry and economy: (i) on-going costs of £2-5bn per annum, which compares to our total profit £26.1bn for the five listed UK banks in 2014E; (ii) one-off transitional costs of £1.5-2.5bn; (iii) negative GDP impact of 0.04-0.1%; (iv) reduced tax receipts of £150-400mn (this assumes all bank costs are passed onto the consumer); and (v) a reduction in the value of the government’s shareholdings in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group in the range of £2bn to £5bn relative to a ‘do nothing’ baseline scenario (compares to current value of £45.1bn).

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