In today's globalized economy, banking is of international importance. This book interrogates important issues, including reform in China, electronic money and loan pricing. Highlighting key policy and research, it provides insight into contemporary global banking trends and assesses the impact of new technology for future industry development.

Within less than two years, a currency crisis that began in Thailand had spread throughout East Asia, Russia, and Brazil, affecting developed economies as well as emerging markets around the world. The scope and virulence of this international financial contagion was completely unexpected. In an attempt to better understand these events, a group of leading economists from international institutions, academic universities, and the private sector gathered at a conference sponsored by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank. This book presents a selection of the papers given at this conference. This is the most extensive collection to date of research on international financial contagion. It includes survey articles and policy discussions, as well as detailed theoretical models and empirical analyses. Topics range from how to define contagion, to the relative importance of real versus financial linkages, to what policies could reduce contagion in the future. Many of the chapters perform empirical tests attempting to explain why crises spread, either by focusing on a specific transmission channel or an individual country or region. The chapters in this book have made impressive strides toward better understanding the causes and channels of international financial contagion.

'Packed with insights and details that will both amaze and appal you' - Oliver Bullough, author of Butler to the World Across the world, HSBC likes to sell itself as 'the world's local bank', the friendly face of corporate and personal finance. And yet, a decade ago, the same bank was hit with a record US fine of $1.9 billion for facilitating money laundering for 'drug kingpins and rogue nations'. In pursuit of their goal of becoming the biggest bank in the world, between 2003 to 2010, HSBC allowed El Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most notorious and murderous criminal organizations in the world, to turn its ill-gotten money into clean dollars and thereby grow one of the deadliest drugs empires the world has ever seen. How did a bank, which boasts 'we're committed to helping protect the world's financial system on which millions of people depend, by only doing business with customers who meet our high standards of transparency' come to facilitate Mexico's richest drug baron? And how did a bank that had been named 'one of the best-run organizations in the world' become so entwined with one of the most barbaric groups of gangsters on the planet? Too Big to Jail is an extraordinary story brilliantly told by writer, commentator, and former editor of The Independent, Chris Blackhurst, that starts in Hong Kong and ranges across London, Washington, the Cayman Islands and Mexico, where HSBC saw the opportunity to become the largest bank in the world, and El Chapo seized the chance to fuel his murderous empire by laundering his drug proceeds through the bank. It brings together an extraordinary cast of politicians, bankers, drug dealers, FBI officers and whistle-blowers, and asks what price does greed have? Whose job is it to police global finance? And why did not a single person go to prison for facilitating the murderous expansion of a global drug empire?

This book examines the development of the international market for syndicated credits over the past three decades. It brings together practitioners' and academics' views on this form of financing and provides original answers to previously little-explored research questions. What determines banks' participation choices and supply? What influences the pricing of emerging country loans, particularly in times of crises? What are the differences with industrialized country loans and bonds? With its extensive coverage and thought-provoking insights, the book is of particular value for students, practitioners and academics.

Monetary policies and international standards and norms on banking regulations have, once again, come to the forefront of the policy discussion in developed nations due to the recent crisis in the world's financial markets. This discussion is far from new, nor does it apply exclusively to the world's most advanced economies. A stable monetary policy and a sound and well-enforced regulatory regime can help developing nations channel financial resources more efficiently into investments. For open economies it can also act as a buffer, an important stability factor in today's shaky market environment.
This book assesses the challenges facing monetary policies and the independence of central banks. It explores banking systems and examines the impact of monetary policy and banking sector regulations on bank efficiency and economic growth in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, at the same time investigating the level of convergence of regulatory practices and efficiency to EU Mediterranean standards.

Financial crises have occurred throughout history, resulting in the loss of national and international public and personal wealth, creating political uncertainty and shaking the foundations of the national, regional and international economic and social order. This book provides answers to the basic questions of what could have caused some of the more recent regional financial crises, what their key characteristics were, how they could have been prevented, what lessons national governments, central bankers and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have learned and how such crises could be prevented in the future. The authors include current and former cabinet members of national governments, central bankers, IMF officials, scholars and practicing economists in both national and multilateral organizations, all of whom have either participated in the management of the various types of financial crises they analyze and discuss and/or have made major contributions to their understanding, including recommendations of how they could be avoided in the future.

The Ethics of Banking analyzes the systemic and the ethical mistakes that led to the crisis. It keeps the middle ground between excusing all failures by the argument of a systemic crisis not to be taken responsibility for by the financial managers and the moralistic reproach that only moral failure is at the origin of the crisis. It investigates the role of speculation in the formation of the crisis and distinguishes between productive speculation for hedging and for securing market liquidity on the one hand, and unproductive and even detrimental hyper-speculation going far beyond of the degree of speculation that is necessary in a developed economy for the liquidity of financial markets, on the other hand. Hyper-speculation has increased the risks of the financial system and is still doing so.

Banking privatisation represents one of the major forces which are significantly changing the banking sector in Europe. Studying the process of banking privatisation thus helps to understand the dynamics of the sector. This book analyses - from the perspective of both commercial banking and investment banking - the various processes of banking privatisation in Europe and their effects on the strategies and structures of banks. In its theoretical part, the book considers technical and financial aspects of banking privatisation from Spain, France, Italy, Norway, Germany, and Russia. An indispensable reading for investment bankers, regulators as well as policy-makers responsible for the existence of efficient and stable banking systems.

Bank failures, crises, global banking, megamergers, changes in technology--the effect of these world events is to weaken existing methods of regulating bank safety and soundness, and even to make some methods ineffective. Federal regulators are evaluating new ways to solve them. Dr. Gup and his panel of academics and regulatory professionals explore these problems and the difficulties in implementing solutions. They point out that global banking, megamergers, and changes in technology are drastically altering the way financial services are delivered. They also argue that existing methods of bank regulation, formulated in the United States and elsewhere as early as the 19th century, are not able to cope with these changes. The search now underway for new methods that are global in scope. Inevitably, they will involve cross-border supervision and international cooperation.

Covering a wide range of topics, from the rationale of banking regulation to optimal banking regulation in the new world environments, this book examines the innovative tools needed to cope with these problems. Greater reliance on market discipline; the use of internal controls based on statistical models, such as Value-at-Risk; and subordinated debt are discussed. This timely, probing analysis of one of the hottest topics in bank regulation today, is an important resource for professionals and their academic colleagues in the fields of banking, finance, investment, and world trade.

To the layman who wishes to understand modern Islamic financial transactions, this book will prove friendly and helpful. It provides the underlying principles of Shariah financial instruments and presented them in actual and practical form. Since 1983, Malaysia has been making significant inroads into the Islamic financials landscape. Today Islamic financial transactions have made their presence felt in almost all financial institutions including banks, unit trusts, insurance, discount houses, fund management, factoring, pawn broking and project financing. And with more than USD200 billion Islamic funds available in global finance today, it is logical that the business of Islamic banking, insurance and fund management is fast expanding and encroaching into non-traditional financing. As the Holy Quran enjoins profit creation via trading and commercial transactions (al-bay') while forbidding profit earned from loans (riba), increasing Islamic consciousness among the Muslims today has opened up new business opportunities in Islamic finance, financial planning and wealth management. The Shariah not only condone interest as riba, but prohibits elements of gambling (maisir) in financial transactions. Ambiguities (gharar) in contractual agreements must be avoided at all cost while companies seeking Islamic capital must not engage with prohibited goods such as alcoholic beverages, pork and pornographic material. But current practices although unintentionally seem to out focus the real Quranic agenda for wealth creation and management. The Quranic alternative to riba is trade and commerce (al-bay'). The essence of trade and commerce is profit creation that implicates risk-taking (ghorm) and value-addition (kasb). Doing so promotes fairness and equitable transactions ('adl) and thus putting ethics and morality (akhlak) into the limelight of corporate business today. This book has attempted to venture into several issues of Islamic finance that incorporates the Quranic conception of trading and commerce (al-bay'). Profit created from financial instruments devoid of risk-taking (ghorm) and value addition (kasb) does not fit into the Quran's outlook of al-bay'. It critically examines current Islamic financial products offered by banks, mutual funds and insurance companies and help guide prospective customers to understand the underlying Shariah principles on which these products are structured. Products ranging from bank deposits/assets and capital market instruments are discussed based on prevailing practical experience in Malaysia as well as other Muslim countries. Divergent Shariah opinions on sale-buyback (bay' al-'inah) and debt trading (bay'al-dayn) are discussed with good intentions to harmonize global Islamic financial transactions. Of most significant is the push for equity financing (musyarakah/mudarabah) in the banking business with proper application of salam and istisna' contract as well. Widespread use of murabahah and al-bai-bithaman ajil (credit sale) contracts in Islamic finance is a worrying trend. This book tries to explore the place of Islamic financial contracts in modern financial markets, whether Islamic financial instruments actually reflect true label. Implication of trading (al-bay') is expected to invite venture capital application in Islamic banking and rationalizes universal banking model for Islamic banks. This book serves to guide banking customers, practitioners and investors over the range of Shariah products available in Malaysia's financial market and help impress how these products can impact their earnings and business.

Paul J.J. Welfens and Holger C. Wolf While the economies of Asia and, more recently, South as well as North America have enjoyed sustained high growth, the growth performance of western Europe and in particular continental Europe has been rather modest. Coupled with sizable improvements in labor productivity and - at best - steady capital productivity, growth proved insufficient to sustain employment levels, much less to replicate the US job creation success. Relative inflation performance has been much better: in the run-up to European Monetary Union inflation rates have dramatically converged towards the lower end of the distribution while risk premia on formerly high inflation economies have fallen. Yet, looking forward, the undoubted success in achieving price stability is mitigated by the lackluster growth -and in particular employment -performance. Indeed, the relative little attention paid to initiatives directed at raising economic growth is startling, not only in the light of the US policy record but also in light of the remarkable rebound of those European economies which have aggressively tackled the structural problems, most prominently the UK and Ireland.

This book examines the reforms of banking in Eastern Europe, which are a key element of the transition to the market in those economies. Particular emphasis is placed on the "bad domestic bank debt" problem. The book also analyzes the development of capital markets in Eastern Europe, and their role in attracting foreign flows, with case-studies on the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.;Contributions are from senior policy-makers and academics from Central and Eastern Europe who are involved in the reforms.

Building upon a wide range of literatures, this book argues that international regulatory institutions become stronger when oligopolistic institutional arrangements decay and competitive pressures intensify. This is shown to be the case for global finance by the study of two inter-state institutions - the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Organization of Securities Commissions, and of the international banking and securities industries which they seek to regulate. There is also the development of the concept of "private" regimes.

The Pyramid of Lies by international financial journalist Duncan Mavin, is the true story of Lex Greensill, the Australian farmer who became a hi-flying billionaire banker before crashing back down to earth, exposing a tangled network of flawed financiers, politicians and industrialists. Lex Greensill had a simple, billion-dollar idea - democratising supply chain finance. Suppliers want to get their invoices paid as soon as possible. Companies want to hold off as long as they can. Greensill bridged the two, it's mundane, boring even, but he saw an opportunity to profit. However, margins are thin and Lex, ever the risk taker, made lucrative loans with other people's money: to a Russian cargo plane linked to Vladmir Putin, to former Special Forces who ran a private army, and crucially to companies that were fraudulent or had no revenue. When the company finally collapsed it exposed the revolving door between Westminster and big business and how David Cameron was allowed to lobby ministers for cash that would save Greensill's doomed business. Instead, Credit Suisse and Japan's SoftBank are nursing billions of dollars in losses, a German bank is under criminal investigation, and thousands of jobs are at risk. What Bad Blood did for Silicon Valley and The Smartest Guys in the Room did for Wall Street, The Pyramid of Lies will do for the world of shadow banking and supply chain finance. It is a world populated with some of the most outlandish characters in business and some of the most outrageous examples of excess. It is a story of greed and ambition that shines a light on the murky intersection between politics and business, where lavish fortunes can be made and lost.

This text brings together a number of research studies, all of which examine the behaviour of foreign exchange rates. The main focus of the collection is on empirical characterization of high-frequency exchange rate data. The pioneering studies demonstrate and explain, amongst other things, the regular patterns in intra-day foreign exchange rate activity, the effects of macroeconomic news of rates and analyze the profitability of technical trading rules in these markets. The collection should be of use to students, academics and practitioners who are interested in exchange rate dynamics.

At the start of the twenty-first century, the Japanese financial system is undergoing a major transformation. This process is spurred by a sense of crisis. Dominated by large institutions, the Japanese banking system has suffered from serious problems with non-performing loans since the early 1990s, when the Japanese stock market and urban real estate market both crashed. Delays in responding to these twin asset bubbles, by both regulatory authorities and the banks themselves, made matters worse and led to a banking crisis in late 1997 and early 1998. Not anticipating this setback, in late 1996 the Japanese government inaugurated its Big Bang of comprehensive financial deregulation designed to complete the process of creating free, fair, and open financial markets'. Beginning in late 1998 and early 1999 the government finally embarked on a major rehabilitation of the Japanese banking system, including making available some Yen 60 trillion (approximately USD 500 billion) of government funds to recapitalize fifteen major banks, adequately fund the deposit insurance program, and write off the bad loans of nationalized or bankrupted banks. One result of this reform process is that the Ministry of Finance (MOF), which dominated Japanese financial system policy for most of the post-war period, has been stripped of most of its former regulatory powers. The purpose of this book is to describe, analyze, and evaluate the process that is transforming the Japanese financial system. The chapters address various issues relating to the transition of the Japanese financial system from a bank-centered and relationship-based system to a competitive market-based system. Questions taken up include: Why did Japanese banks get into such serious trouble? Why has the MOF lost its immense power? How will the Big Bang's financial deregulation further change the Japanese financial system, including the huge government financial institutions and postal savings system? What are some of the broader implications of this transition? The book is divided into three parts: Part I considers the origins of Japan's banking crisis; Part II focuses on five particularly important areas of major actual and potential changes; Part III addresses the effects of the Big Bang, including its potential systemic externalities. Taken together, this book offers an unusually up-to-date, comprehensive and thorough appraisal and evaluation of the profound changes occurring in Japan's financial system.

The Bundesbank is one of the world's most powerful and successful central banks, outstanding for its independence in the conduct of monetary policy and for its success in the achievement of relative price stability virtually throughout the post-war era. This collection of essays by the President of the Bundesbank, by former and present Board members and by Heads of Department within the Bundesbank offer a rare inside insight into its operations. The individual contributions to this volume explain the historical, legal and institutional basis of German internal and external monetary policy and highlight the goals of the German central bank and its role in the economy as a whole. The role of the Deutschmark as one of the leading international transaction, reserve and investment currencies is discussed in detail. Students of monetary management and the banking community throughout the world will benefit greatly from a study of this unique volume.

Banking is now an active asset-liability risk management enterprise, attributable in large part to the globalization of commerce. The authors of this descriptive yet practical, applications-oriented book examine the sources and management of traditional and nontraditional banking risks, then the conventional on-balance sheet and the modern off-balance sheet risk management methods. Unlike other more general risk management books, however, they focus closely on the use of financial derivatives--instruments to control the core risks attributable to credit and to fluctuations in interest and foreign exchange rates. The authors cover all this and more, giving experienced and novice practitioners both an easily accessed way to understand and cope with the banking risks they are already familiar with, and the new risks just emerging. The book will also be useful as a supplemental text in college-level courses on money and banking and on the operation of financial markets in general.

The authors begin by explaining how banking has moved from a routine financial process to an active and impersonal process of risk management, from relationship banking to community banking. Even banks that have stayed with traditional lending are now assuming greater risks. The authors then focus on the details of measuring, monitoring, and controlling risks. They define risk and the different philosophical approaches to its management, then continue with a discussion of operational matters, such as risk identification and classification. They discuss the evolution of banking risk management and the banking environment of the 20th Century, with special attention to the differences in methods used during the time of fragmented and highly regulated economies and those used in the highly integrated global economies of the last quarter century. The book describes in useful detail the major financial derivative products: forwards, options, caps, collars, and swaps, and their uses as risk management devices and tools for speculation, both. The book also treats on-balance sheet risk management methods, such as credit options and credit swaps. Interest rate risk is also covered in detail, and so too the management of foreign currency risk.

This book summarizes Chinese banks' achievements in global markets and examines the differences between Chinese and foreign banks. It also explores the future roadmap of internationalization and the risks involved in the process, in order to provide reference resource for Chinese banks. Based on the CBII (Chinese Bank Internationalization Index), which was first released in 2015, the book introduces the Banks' Internationalization Index ("BII") and expands the BII by examining two groups of data, including the number of overseas branches, overseas assets and revenue. In addition it analyzes representative Chinese banks' internationalization, using 16 of the Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) as benchmarks.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the modelling of operational risk using possibility theory. It provides a set of methods for measuring operational risks under a certain degree of vagueness and impreciseness, as encountered in real-life data. It shows how possibility theory and indeterminate uncertainty-encompassing degrees of belief can be applied in analysing the risk function, and describes the parametric g-and-h distribution associated with extreme value theory as an interesting candidate in this regard. The book offers a complete assessment of fuzzy methods for determining both value at risk (VaR) and subjective value at risk (SVaR), together with a stability estimation of VaR and SVaR. Based on the simulation studies and case studies reported on here, the possibilistic quantification of risk performs consistently better than the probabilistic model. Risk is evaluated by integrating two fuzzy techniques: the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and the fuzzy extension of techniques for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution. Because of its specialized content, it is primarily intended for postgraduates and researchers with a basic knowledge of algebra and calculus, and can be used as reference guide for research-level courses on fuzzy sets, possibility theory and mathematical finance. The book also offers a useful source of information for banking and finance professionals investigating different risk-related aspects.

Over the last ten years mobile payment systems have revolutionised banking in some countries in Africa. In Kenya the introduction of M-Pesa, a new financial services model, has transformed the banking and financial services industry. Giving the unbanked majority access to the financial services market it has attracted over 18 million subscribers which is remarkable given that fewer than 4 million people in Kenya have bank accounts. This book addresses the legal and regulatory issues arising out of the introduction of M-Pesa in Kenya and its drive towards financial inclusion. It considers the interaction between regulation and technological innovation with a particular focus on the regulatory tools, institutional arrangements and government decisional processes through the examination as a whole of its regulatory capacity. This is done with a view to understanding the regulatory capacity of Kenya in addressing the vulnerabilities presented by technological innovation in the financial industry for consumers after financial inclusion. It also examines the way that mobile payments have been regulated by criticising the piecemeal approach that the Central Bank of Kenya has taken in addressing the legal and regulatory issues presented by mobile payments. The book argues there are significant gaps in the regulatory regime of mobile banking in Kenya.

The financial crisis has exposed severe shortcomings in mainstream monetary economics and modern finance. It is surprising that these shortcomings have not led to a wider debate about the need to overhaul these theories. Instead, mainstream economists have closed ranks to defend existing theories and public authorities have expanded their interference in markets. This book investigates the problems associated with mainstream monetary economics and finance, and proposes alternatives based on the Austrian school of economics. This school emanated from the work of the nineteenth-century Austrian economist Carl Menger and was developed further by Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich August von Hayek. In monetary economics, the Austrian school regards the creation of money by banks through credit extension as a key source of economic instability. From this follows the need for a comprehensive reform of our present monetary system. In a new monetary order, money could be issued by both public and private institutions, and there would be no need for fractional reserve banking. Instead of creating money, banks would intermediate it. In finance, the Austrian school rejects the notion of rational expectations and measurable risk. Individuals use their subjective knowledge to gather and evaluate information, and they act in a world of radical uncertainty. Hence, markets are not "efficient" nor can portfolios be built on the basis of known probability distributions of asset prices as described in the modern finance literature. This book explores the need for a new theoretical foundation for asset pricing and investment management that will give practitioners more useful orientation.