Over-egging the pudding: the folly of excessive IT investment
Are banks’ IT systems providing value or are they effectively brain dead? This month our technology editor, Parveen Bansal, considers how little banks get back from their huge investment in IT and what can be done to improve it. Financial sector reform is also high on the agenda of Asian Development Bank president Tadao Chino who insists it is key to sustaining high growth across the region. And in Malaysia, Maybank’s chief executive, Amirsham Aziz, discusses corruption, Havana nightclubs and the upcoming elections.
Adding more Asian flavour Standard Chartered’s chief executive, Mervyn Davies, shares his vision of China and India. And Turkey’s finance minister, Kemal Unakitan, discusses a new development bank, led by Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, that draws in the five countries of central Asia.
In a large Latin American focus, we interview the Inter-American Development Bank’s president Enrique Iglesias and assess the IDB’s record. In addition, we look at the huge growth in investment banking activity from Mexico to Chile as well as banks’ new Latin retail strategies. And in Central America we examine Nicaragua’s fragile banking sector, volatile politics and debt relief. Also we include, for the first time, a listing of the Top 100 Central American banks, which is dominated by Panamanian banks. And in a further innovation, The Banker publishes its first ranking of trade conditions for Latin America, which is topped by Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
In capital markets, ABN Amro’s Piero Overmars explains that the bank’s reorganisation is reflected in better performance, our Team of the Month is Deutsche Bank for its innovative inflation-linked bond for Fannie Mae; we also look at the race to develop credit futures and ask whether M&A is really on the way back. In FX & Treasury, we offer some prognoses about the dollar’s fate and in Global Securities Services, Dennis Dutterer, head of the Clearing Corporation, tells of its role in the battle for the Chicago derivatives markets.
Meanwhile in Europe, we assess Icelandic banks’ ambitions abroad, the resurgence of Romania’s banking sector and our Russian supplement examines the country’s ever-maturing capital markets. Our supplement on Croatia looks at the road towards EU accession and, elsewhere, China’s banks prepare for more competition, India discusses pensions and outsourcing and Kenya’s banks battle with bureaucracy. In addition, our Saudi Arabian supplement analyses the impact of the new capital markets law, Fidelity Information Services’ president Jim Wilson outlines his acquisition strategy and we look at the key role of branch design.
