India’s policymakers must allow it to live up to its potential

Delegates to the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting to be held in the city in early May are likely to be in awe of both the city and the country. For in the next decade, India will surely follow China into the ranks of world economic locomotives.

India has everything going for it: resources, skills, capital and a huge market. Yet takeoff cannot be taken for granted and policymakers have to make India as attractive a place to invest as China currently is. In this month’s issue of The Banker, Kala Rao explores the contradictions – and the unintended consequences – in India’s perverse policies for regulation of capital flows.

While in India foreign banks struggle to get access to the market at all, in China the great debate is: whose strategy is the best? Our Shanghai correspondent Kazuhiko Shimizu compares the different approaches of HSBC, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of America.

Our Asian coverage is completed by articles on Taiwanese banking, including an interview by editor-in-chief Stephen Timewell with the country’s new vice-premier Tsai Ing-wen; an update on the Indian outsourcing business; and a supplement on Kazakhstan.

Elsewhere in the world we look at banking in Croatia and Lithuania; microfinance in Mexico; and we interview the prime minister of Iceland and the finance minister of Slovenia. There are features on Saudi Arabia and Germany; and supplements on the Dominican Republic and Nigeria.

This month’s cover story explores the vexed corporate governance issue as it impacts on banks – a matter made all the more relevant by the surprise announcement that Chuck Prince will become both chairman and CEO of Citigroup.

The Banker invited heads of financial institutions groups and insurance from leading investment banks to discuss the latest trends in capital raising and M&A. The results are published in round table format on page 30.

In this month’s capital markets section we have an interview with BNP Paribas’ new corporate and investment banking chief, Jacques d’Estais; team of the month is from Merrill Lynch for the European Investment Bank’s first $1bn 30-year bond; and issuer strategy looks at ING’s sterling hybrid. Derivatives writer Natasha de Teran explores the new and exciting market in emissions trading, and there is a supplement on covered bonds. Retail strategy features an interview with Unicredit’s Roberto Nicastro, and Tech Vision is about a man with an unusual title: JP Rangaswani is DrKW’s new head of alternative market models. Last but not least, included in this issue is a supplement on service-oriented architecture.

Brian Caplen,

Editor