The continuing saga — Basel II developments: bank capital management in the light of Basel II — how to manage capital in financial institutions

Abstract

Capital matters to most corporations in free markets, but there are differences. Companies in non‐financial industries need equity capital mainly to support funding to buy property and to build or acquire production facilities and equipment to pursue new areas of business. While this is also true for financial institutions, their main focus is somewhat different. Banks actively evaluate and take risks on a daily basis as part of their core business processes. For example, the commercial lending business inherently involves weighing the credit risk of new loans and their associated mitigates. This involves analysis of the credit quality of the underlying obligor, the effectiveness of guarantees, collateral, cross‐default and other forms of credit protection. Today, however, best practice does not stop there. It also is necessary to evaluate the impact of portfolio diversification (e.g. in terms of geographical or industry concentration of exposures) and the degree of correlation among exposures on the bank's balance sheet. Another example is trading activity whereby a bank benefits from high trading volumes (by earning the bid/ask spread) and hopes to gain from proprietary net positions, but must bear some degree of market risk in the process.