Thursday, March 25, 2010

SCMP:The crisis lesson that the HKMA still hasn't learned

http://www.lbv.org.hk/content/pages/posts/the-crisis-lesson-that-the-hkma-still-hasnt-learned7511.php


This is worrying, because if there is one lesson the HKMA boss really should have learned from the financial crisis, it is that while Hong Kong's supervision of banking system stability is relatively solid, our regulatory protection of bank customers is woefully inadequate, as the Lehman minibond scandal demonstrated.
In fact, the HKMA's over-emphasis on systemic stability proved actively harmful to ordinary bank customers. It was because of concerns over the financial strength of Hong Kong smaller banks' following the dismantling of the interest rate cartel in the late 1990s that the HKMA encouraged them to increase their fee income, for example by selling complex structured products to depositors