Should banking and the securities business be handled by the same organizations? Can banks safely engage in a wide range of high-risk non-banking activities? Why are the major economies of the world repealing the laws that have (since the 1930s) carefully regulated what the banks can do?

Richard Dale is an expert with wide Knowledge of both the global structure and the national detail of modern banking systems. This book provides an informed, serious and authoritative warning about the structural faultlines running through international financial markets. The collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International analysed in the final chapter is one of the most chilling of a number of indications that the great global banking experiment may yet run out of control.

In this pioneering book, Richard Dale considers in detail the new global banking structure. He puts into perspective the significance of recent developments and provides an analysis of the events of 1929 when 9000 banks collapsed with losses equivalent to $6 billion. Then US banks suffered from involvement in high-risk securities activities, which were subsequently prohibited by the Glass Steagall Act. Now that universal banking is reemerging, Dale examines the new regulatory frameworks set up in the US, the UK, Europe and Japan. The additional risks confronting banks are assessed in the context of other commercial pressures on banks such as intensified competition and unprecedented financial innovation.