Bankers target ‘anti-US’ parts of Basel III
According to one analysis, Bank of America, with $2,261bn in assets, has risk-weighted assets of $1,398bn, while Barclays of the UK has a similar level of total assets at $2,448bn but risk-weighted assets of $648bn.
This skews the capital ratio hugely. BofA ends up with a tier one common ratio of 8.23 per cent but, if it could adopt the same ratio of risk-weighted assets to total assets as Barclays, its ratio would be 11 per cent.
.. “We used to give the large banks explicitly lower capital ratios than the smaller banks,” he says. “I believe we should not have discriminatory capital policies – whether you’re big or little.”