Regulation: curbing growth (TT Dec03 p37-38)

Nordic Financial Systems (NFS) recently carried out a global survey on organisational change and shared service centre (SSC) initiatives among treasuries1. The main conclusion was that treasuries fear the trend that banks are becoming increasingly reluctant to offer different kinds of loans to finance their operations. Key to this finding was the perception that new regulations are enforcing that trend. Here, we describe how the present regulatory frenzy may create an inefficient financial sector, making the larger corporations risk averse, and so affecting the prosperity of business and society.