It’s Game-On for End-Game Capital Regulation
Many rules determine the terms of combat in key financial markets, but none is as fundamental as bank-capital standards because every decision a bank makes first factors capital costs or benefits. These are axiomatic because, even if every other business assumption a company makes is good, a financial product or service will still prove unprofitable if capital requirements are high enough to doom returns sufficient for insatiable investors. Said by some only to be a tidy Basel III clean-up, the Basel IV “end-game” capital rules set to come in the next month or so are actually a substantive recalibration of which businesses make banks how much money compared to all the competitors empowered over the years by the happy – if highly risky – absence of like-kind requirements. It’s thus no wonder that it’s already game-on for the future of the end-game regulations.