A full account of the rise and fall of British banking stability which sheds new light on why banking systems crash.

This book demonstrates the variation in the reaction of the UK’s ‘big four’ banks – RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC – to the Great Financial Crisis 2008. Over a decade on from the financial crisis, this book asks: have banks in the UK learned lessons from the crisis? Bank learning in the UK after the Great Financial Crisis is something we need to know more about. Whether banks are now safer and more likely to aid rather than disrupt the economy are important questions of social relevance. Through a documentary analysis of Britain’s ‘big four’ banks in the post-crisis decade (2008–2018), this book demonstrates that while some institutions have become more risk averse and display positive signs of learning, others have shown little evidence of change. The book uses notions of agency, path dependency and structural competitive pressures to explain these inter-bank variations of behaviour. This book contributes to wider post-crash structural debates about growth, markets, and regulatory reform, showing how the agency of banks has played a vital role in driving the reform process.

A history of British financial crises since the Napoleonic wars, providing an account of the main crises from 1825 until the credit crunch of 2007-8.

What are the long-term causes and consequences of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008? This book offers a fresh perspective on these issues by bringing together a range of academics from law, history, economics and business to look in more depth at the changing relationships between crises and complexity in the US and UK financial markets. The contributors are motivated by three main questions: • Is the present financial system more complex than in the past and, if so, why? • To what extent, and in what ways, does the worldwide financial crisis of 2007–2008 differ from past financial crises? • How can governments, regulators and businesses better manage and deal with increased levels of complexity both in the present and in the future? Students and scholars of finance, economics, history, financial law, banking and international business will find this book to be of interest. It will also be of use to regulators and policymakers involved in the US and UK banking sectors.

It was one of the gravest challenges faced by any British government in peacetime. The banking system, taken for granted by most of the population to pay for life's essentials, came close to collapse. Yet nobody going about their business in October 2008 had any inkling how vulnerable the nation's financial infrastructure was. Nobody, that is, bar a small group of policymakers and ministers working frantically in Whitehall and the City of London. Royal Bank of Scotland, larger than the entire annual output of the UK economy, had toppled. Another banking giant Halifax/Bank of Scotland was in desperate need of a bailout. A staggeringly large bill had to be paid to stave off disaster. But could Britain afford it? Might foreign investors conclude that the UK's public finances could not take the strain and the game was up? Yet doing nothing might have seen cash machines closed, depositors panicking and troops on the streets. These were the appalling dilemmas facing Downing Street, the Treasury and financial regulators in the darkest hours of the crisis triggered by the crash of the US bank Lehman Brothers. As political leaders in the United States confronted challenges to their own system, their British counterparts could rely on nobody for help. A solution had to be found and fast. To their immense credit, a rescue package was unveiled and markets were reassured. But saving the banks was one thing – securing their future to the benefit of taxpayers and customers was another. Decisions made since the traumatic weeks of October 2008 have cast a long shadow. The UK economy is still bearing the scars. RBS is not repaired, some small businesses are struggling to get credit and public appetite for explanations of what happened remains high. This book is the definitive insider's guide to the UK banking crisis, the drama and characters involved in the collapse of some of the major pillars of British banking and the commitment of £66 billion of taxpayers' money. This as yet untold story is informed by conversations with highly placed policymakers, including many of the key players, and explains what really happened behind closed doors in Downing Street and the City.

The Global Financial Crisis made its first appearance in Britain towards the end of 2007 with the failure of the Northern Rock Bank. It then reached an unparalleled intensity a year later when the government was forced to intervene to prevent the collapse of Lloyds/HBOS and RBS/Natwest. Before these events the British banking system possessed a long established reputation for resilience and competence that made it one of the most admired and trusted in the world. The financial crisis of 2007/8, and the subsequent revelations about the behaviour of bankers, destroyed that reputation and drove a desire for a complete reform of the British banking system. Forgotten in this headlong rush towards radical restructuring were the reasons why the British banking system had become so admired and trusted. The aim of this book is to explain why the British banking system gained its reputation for resilience and competence, maintained it for over 100 years, and then lost it in such a rapid and spectacular fashion. To achieve that aim requires a study of the entire banking system. Banks are key components of a complex financial system continually interacting with each other, and constantly changing over time, This makes the conventional distinctions drawn between different types of banks, including those specialising in international finance, savings and loans, corporate lending, and retail deposits and borrowing, inappropriate for any long-term analysis. The distinctions between different types of banks were neither absolute nor permanent but relative and temporary. Banks were also central to both the payments system and the money market without which no modern economy could function. What this book is about is the development of the British banking system as a whole over more than three centuries. Only with such an understanding is it possible to appreciate what the British banking system achieved and then maintained from the middle of the 19th century onwards, why it was lost in such a short space of time, and what needs to be done to return it to the position it once occupied. Without such an understanding the mistakes of the recent past are destined to be repeated time and gain.

The 2008 financial crisis has become one of the defining features of the twenty first century’s first decade. The series of events which unfolded in the aftermath of the crisis has exposed major structural flaws in many of the financial systems around the globe, triggering a global call for legal and regulatory reforms to address the problems that have been uncovered. This book deals with a neglected angle of the 2008 financial crisis looking in-depth at the implicit effects of the 2008 crisis on the UK financial market. The book considers new trends in finance which have emerged since the crisis as well as the challenges faced by some older practices in the UK financial markets. After providing a reflective account of the history of law and creditors in the UK the book investigates the proliferation of certain forms of financing that have recently become very visible parts of the UK financial market’s structure, such as high cost short term lending and peer to peer lending. It provides legal and economic accounts of these forms of alternative lending, charting their developments, current status and critically assesses their impact on the UK financial market. Also examined are the ongoing funding difficulties faced by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the suitability of the UK current legal framework to support these institutions. The book goes on to look at the viability and safety of some other post crisis trends such as banks use of Contingent Convertible Bonds (CoCos) to improve their resilience.