As politicians, executives and financiers networked at parties and panels last week in Davos, Switzerland, Barrie Wilkinson was in a nearby hotel, warning that a 2015 financial catastrophe may be looming.
“The fundamentals haven’t been addressed at all,” Wilkinson, a London-based partner at consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said in an interview at the Hotel Morosani Schweizerhof. “The things that caused the previous crisis -- loose monetary policy andtrade imbalances -- they’re actually bigger now than they were then.”
In the caste system of the World Economic Forum’s annual event in the Swiss ski resort, Wilkinson was at a bottom rung, with an identification badge that denied him access to most sessions and soirees. His message clashed with the optimistic tone of many at the center of the meeting, who were eager to emphasize the progress made after two years of hand-wringing in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
“The systemic reforms that have been accomplished are significant,” Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said as he left a private meeting with finance company chief executive officers on Jan. 29. “We need to communicate better that financial institutions globally are operating on a very different basis today, that they are operating with higher capital and are better regulated.”
‘An Avoidable History’
Wilkinson’s report, titled “The Financial Crisis of 2015: An Avoidable History,” isn’t so sanguine. The 24-page study describes how banks, unwilling to accept the lower returns on equity, or ROEs, that result from higher capital requirements, may fuel a new bubble by chasing high returns in commodities or emerging markets. Regulators, by focusing their restraints on banks, may drive risk-taking into unregulated funds that also pose danger to the system.
UBS Advice
Oliver Wyman, a subsidiary of New York-based Marsh & McLennan Cos., played a role in the last financial crisis. The firm’s strategy consultants advised UBS AG’s fixed-income unit, which was lagging other divisions in early 2007, to invest in U.S. mortgage securities and collateralized debt obligations to boost returns, according to a review submitted by UBS to Switzerland’s federal banking commission in April 2008. Those investments helped fuel almost $58 billion in losses and writedowns at the Zurich-based bank.
After the 2008 crisis, governments and central banks spent unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money to bail out the financial system. Part of Wilkinson’s concern is that if the system is allowed to return to its old boom-bust habits, debt- strapped governments may not be able to handle the fallout of another crisis, either financially or politically.
“If there is another banking crisis, the Western governments are just in no shape to stabilize the system, they’ve expended their entire arsenal on the last round of fiscal injections,” Wilkinson said.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-31/lonely-analyst-warns-of-2015-bank-crisis-amid-upbeat-davos.html
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