Executive insight – Warring bankers line up on Basel III battle lines

More than three years after the start of the financial crisis and two years after the default of Lehman Brothers, the world economy is still struggling to climb back from the depth of the latest Great Recession. The summer of 2010 has seen probably the quickest recovery pace since late 2008, thanks to the rebound in manufacturing, the resilience of China (and other Asian economies) and the fiscal stimuli enacted in early 2009, but the forecasts for the rest of the year are less upbeat. One of the areas of major concern is the state of the banking sector. Until recently, the measures to tackle the aftermath of the crisis have been limited to unprecedented injections of money by taxpayers and liquidity from central banks (which also comes from taxpayers, just under a different heading). Despite this, plans to revamp prudential regulations and buttress the pillars of the world’s financial