Grey skies

Reporting by Timon Molloy

The financial crisis is forcing banks to review their business but even as it drags on with no end in sight, that self-examination may not be searching enough, Antony Whitehouse, Head of Compliance at Calyon in London, believes. “Finally, a lot of banks may not see much alternative to the sort of model they operated prior to the credit crunch.” There will certainly be retrenchment, he acknowledges, notably in structured products, which saw oil money and Far East savings chasing higher returns promised by western institutions at their most inventive. After three, five or ten years though,“probably towards the upper end,” there will be a drift back towards the sort of banking profile that has just failed,“It’s all part of the great boom and bust cycle.”