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Talk:List of systemically important banks

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background on this list

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Wanted to show SIFI's have several important facets

  • Region
  • Country
  • Currency
  • Primary Regulators

Default Sort

SIFIs are arranged in roughly the time order the world's financial markets open up for trading. This is a significant factor. When major worldwide news breaks over the weekend (example war breaks out, a president is shot...) EVERYONE looks to Asian markets first, because they open up first, the news is processed into trading prices in Asia, that impacts the open in UK/EU, and the subsequent open in North America. Temporal order is very important. If major world wide news hits during the day, traders go immediately to markets that are open for business. Cross border arbitrageurs work frantically ahead of the next major market to open.

Currency is important

Trading between countries with different currencies implies FOREIGN EXCHANGE. Every cross border trade typically implies a parallel FX transaction. The FX markets must absorb all the cross border equity and fixed income trading. Again cross border arbitrage requires a huge amount of FX trading capacity. Getting the equity and fixed income (long term assets) trading DONE requires CASH denominated in the home country currency.

Regions are important

Regions are important because the trading infrastructure itself is broken down that way. A SIFI typically has SEPARATE data centers and IT operations in EACH of the three worldwide global regions. To them there are only three time zones in the world, as each region typically supplies all the compute power for all the separate countries within. Staff doesn't go home until the last market closes in their region and markets in the next time zone region are up and running.

This is not an article

All the "narrative" about SIFIs is left to main Encyclopedia type article. This page is a listing and cross reference chart.

A key cross reference

Show which country considers which institution "Systemically Important".

Provide easy identification of the top level regulator

Once you enter the legal realm, location becomes critically important. Regulation, Audit, Fraud, bankruptcy, etc. are implemented absolutely on a region by region legal basis. There is no such thing as a "globally registered" financial institution that somehow transcends more than one sovereign nation. Each of the "banks" here are typically bank holding companies consisting of 100's if not 1000's of separate legal entities.

Exchange listings

A large bank's stock is typically listed on more than one exchange. Yes, that is generally true. However look at the actual trading volume in those shares and determine if 80% or more of the dollar weighted trades of the entity occurs on more than a SINGLE primary exchange? (It typically does not.) Also note that a stock typically issues common dividends in a single currency. Foreign banks are generally listed in away markets as a Depositary Receipt. (in America called an ADR). This is primarily a retail product created by "middle men" who perform the servicing and arbitrage trading work (and extract that rent) back to the dominate trading market. What we want here is where the dominate trading in the stock occurs.

Location, Location, Location

If a SIFI were suddenly in deep financial trouble, threatening the world global financial system (as actually occurred in 2008) its the really up to the home nation's regulators and central bank to step in, prop up, implement orderly restructuring, etc. Financial capacity to do that is limited by that nations specific ability to borrow money quickly, denominated in its home currency, to be paid back by its very own taxpayers. [Think Iceland...] Yet the impact is global, because very large banks are indeed "interconnected". Location, location, location.... don't think it's important? Visit any of these SIFI's and ride up to the floor where the tax planners are housed. There likely will be an entire floor of them. The corporate records books will fill a wall. They move the bank's legal entities (each located and registered in a specific location) around the globe with a keen eye towards jurisdiction, rule of law, profit opportunity and taxes. Note how the reported profits of the outer most legal entities eventually flow back to the consolidated holding company? Location is clearly critical. Rick (talk) 00:41, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

flags, currency symbols and notes

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I think it is important to keep the list as compact as possible. However now it is not possible to display the list without wrap even with 1024px horizontal resolution. To achieve more compact list we can:

Comment: before making adjustments would suggest having a target px to work towards? (this thing is not likely to easily be displayed on a cell phone.) Flags add color so would be opposed to elimination, symbols are very narrow column and helps with different currencies of the same name. Agree that notes could be footnote style. Not opposed to taking the font size overall down a notch. Some columns could be tightened with abbreviations. Entire chart was designed to tell a factual "whole story", and each of the current columns contribute. Rick (talk)

RBS country Scotland or UK?

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There has been some debate if RBS should fly the U.K. or Scotland flag? Of importance to this listing specific is currency and bankruptcy.

Scotland's currency are promissory notes, repayable in GB pounds. Were the "security" of those promissory notes ever to be questioned they could trade at a discount to GB Pounds. Systemic problems involving RBS and other Scotland banks all issuing those promissory notes, outside of external intervention might cause those paper IOUs to trade at a discount. A promise is only as good as the strength of the entity backing it up.

In bankruptcy, or in times of substantial systemic trouble, the bank holding company must be examined in pieces for resolution. Entities underneath that holding company will be domiciled all over the world, each will be "resolved" according to local law.

RBS is HQ in Edinburgh. They issue stock and bonds (secured and unsecured) out of Edinburgh. If RBS went into systemic trouble I assume the bankruptcy legal proceeding would take place in Scotland? That is, the equity holders would likely be wiped out, the secured creditors would become the new direct owners of their secured assets, and the unsecured creditors would get pennies on the pound after a long and tortuous bankruptcy proceeding. All of that I assume would occur in Scotland?

If I'm wrong and all the bankruptcy proceedings for RBS (at the BHC, and Scotland domiciled sub entity level) would just involve London/UK bankruptcy courts then I agree it would be appropriate to fly the UK flag on this row. [[1]]

GB Pound is O.K. but a note regarding the promissory note structure of the Scotland notes might be added.

In any case there is no doubt that RBS resolution would be very complex and likely "tangled" [[2]]. Rick (talk) 16:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

1 August 2013‎ Hendrick 99 - Using UK National Flag instead of Scottish regional flag, the same way the UK Flag (and not the English flag) appears next to HSBC, Barclays, etc.
2 August 2013‎ Rjlabs - Undid revision 566676142 by Hendrick 99 (talk)see talk for much more. Refute there in detail if needed. Key is bankruptcy courts location?
2 August 2013‎ Hendrick 99 - Undid revision 566895578 by Rjlabs - Reverting edit with very confusing summary: Scottish Bankruptcy courts are in the UK (atleast for now))

I'm still not sure flying the UK flag on the RBS Group row is actually correct? Some points to consider:

  • Is RBS Group HQ incorporated in Scotland?
  • Are corporate shares of RBS Group issued out of Scotland?
  • Is Scotland a sovereign nation?
  • Does the elected board of directors of RBS Group meet in Scotland?
  • At the building where the directors meet, what flag do they fly?
  • On the bank notes (currency) issued by RBS Group they use the registered address: 26 St Andrews Square, Edinburgh Scotland. [3]
  • If RBS were to need a bailout, would Scottish taxpayers ultimately foot that bill?
  • Were RBS Group to declare bankruptcy would the court assigned to administer the bankruptcy proceedings be located in Scotland? Would that court report directly to Scottish (vs. English) upper level government? See: http://www.aib.gov.uk/Services/Corporateinsolvency
  • Scotland's legal system continues to be separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in public and private law.[24] The continued existence of legal, educational and religious institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the Union Scotland

Rick (talk) 17:12, 5 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Scottland is in the UK, same as England and North Ireland. If we use the Scottish flag for RBS, we should therefore use the English flag (the Saint George's Cross) for HSBC and Barclays. On its website, RBS's usage of the term 'United Kingdom' appears to imply that it is a British bank. According to Google, RBS appears to fly the RBS-logo flag at its office in Edinburgh ([4]) Either way, I changed the flag when I saw the country name UK appearing with the Scottish flag, though I still think that whilst Scotland is a part of the UK (there's going to be a referendum), RBS is very much a British bank owned by Her Majesty's Government (that is literally whom the Wikipedia article states is the owner, with a confirming reference) Hendrick 99 (talk) 08:16, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I had no idea RBS was 80% owned by the UK (via UKFI), its almost like Bank of China. It makes me especially nervous to see governments own gSIFIs, especially since governments issue an astronomical amount of debt, and are also charged with regulating those institutions, including bailing them out if their failure might cause a systemic crisis.

Including the Governments acquisition of B shares in December 2009 the total economic ownership of the UK Government is currently 80% of the RBS Group.

Yet its also noted:

The UK Government formed UK Financial Investments Ltd (UKFI) to manage its investments in financial institutions including RBS. UKFI has been given a clear mandate by the Government with an overarching objective to dispose of the Government's shareholdings in an orderly and active way, with due regard to financial stability and the promotion of competition.

However the location of the personal bondholder or shareholder is irrelevant in corporate bankruptcy. It's the location of the HQ entity that counts. That is the entity filing for bankruptcy, reorganization, etc. The registered location controls where the case will be heard. Its clear RBS Group is registered in Scotland. Unless bankruptcy courts are combined for all of UK including Scotland (which appears not to be the case) we would need to recognize Scotland as the responsible regulator. Rick (talk) 15:44, 6 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New article name

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I propose we rename the article to List of Systemically Important Financial Institutions, in order to provide a list covering all sorts of SIFI's and not only the SIB's. Reason for this is, that the current SIFI regulation in EU does not differentiate between "systemically important banks" and "systemically important NBFC's". To be more exact, EU's CRD IV regulation sets up the same SIFI rules to apply for all Credit institutions and Investment firms (which of course includes both banks and specialized mortgage-credit institutions), while the CRD IV rules however do not apply for Insurance Companies and Investment Funds (incl. pension funds).

The term "Investment firms" are in European legislation defined as: Firms that provide investment services in connection with securities trading, such as portfolio management of clients' securities portfolios and purchase and sale of securities. In Denmark, this category includes investment companies and credit institutions, but in the purest sense we only have this list of 43 investment firms registered. For a list of all European registered investment firms, you can visit this ESMA webpage. To be honest, I don't have a clue how many (if any) of these Investment Firms will be defined as SIFI; but can only say that we have none Investment Firms being big enough to be SIFI here in Denmark.

My assumption is, that most readers will be interested to browse the full list of SIFI's and not only the SIB's. We could then add a narrow column to the list table named 'type, where we can write a B for Bank, MCI for mortgage-credit institution, etc. If/when some special SIFI-rules are agreed for Insurance Companies and Investment Funds, I also propose these additional SIFI's can be added to the list with a denominated IC for Insurance Companies and IF for Investment Funds. In fact we could also start out already know to add the so-called systemically important financial market utilities, which of course should be abbreviated to FMU. And if we have SIFI-rules for "large hedge funds and traders" or other type of NBFC's, they can of course also be included.

Danish Expert (talk) 14:58, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Compiling a worldwide list of D-SIBs

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Recently I have contributed a lot to expand this debate list/article. It now evolved into being more of an article, featuring both a G-SIB list and a new chapter with D-SIB lists. To say it short, the structure is in place, but it takes a lot of time to find and report the D-SIB lists for each nation in the world (as no single published source exist with overall info for all states). So I need as much of your help as possible - to succeed doing this for each nation. From a starting point, the priority is to compile complete info for: USA, 31 EEA states, Switzerland, Japan and China. My ambition is, that this work shall be completed during the next year. So far, I have updated the table with complete current info for Denmark + Sweden + Norway + Switzerland, but have not got any time left to continue the work during the next 3 months. So you are more than welcome to help me fill in the remaining empty spots.

You can find the missing D-SIB info for each nation, by visiting the official website of its Financial Supervisory Authority. The new European D-SIB regulation, demand that each EEA-member state shall have identified their D-SIB list and associated info about new total capital ratio requirements - at the latest on 31 December 2015. So this mean, that some EEA member states (like UK), haven't yet completed their identification of D-SIBs. However, approximately 50% of the EEA-member states have already identified their D-SIBs, and hence it make sense to start compiling the lists already now. In regards of the already featured D-SIB list for USA, it shall be noted the data is outdated (based on financial data from 2011), so here we need someone to update it - and also to note how big the new total capital requirements are. If you have time and interest for this subject, please help me with the work. :-) Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 11:59, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Managed this weekend to find some time to expand the list with info for Canada + Australia + USA. Still need your help, though, with all the remaining states, and also need a person to look into the capital requirements applying in USA towards their identified SIBs. Hope someone have time to help me, as I do not have anymore time to expand the list with info for the remaining states. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 14:03, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why no assets value in the list?

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It would seem to me that, with the formation of a List of systemically important banks as the article title stands now, one vitally important metric for such systemically important banks would be the total assets under management or in bank accounts (or whatever the international standard calls it). Without that, the list seems much less useful.

Is this data that could be obtained? Perhaps from reports published by one or more of the international banking institutions?

Do others think it would be a useful addition to the tables? Pinging other editors who have commented above: Rick, Hendrick 99, Danish Expert. — Cheers, N2e (talk) 14:17, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

When creating I took a "keep it simple" approach, especially with an eye to keep the page current and accurate. To be included in a table on this page you need to convert local currencies to a common reporting currency, and also be sure the period you are measuring (income statement items) or value "as of a date" (balance sheet items) are all in good sync. The list, right now, is "binary" - if you are (or were) EVER listed by any official national bank regulator as Systemically Important, then on this list you go. There is a column for IR for the English language Investor Relations page, where links to current financial statements are typically only one more hop. Article topic is who are "systemically important" and can't really delve into the specifics of "why" because that is an immensely technical topic. "Large" is only one factor in "systemically risky". Size x the 'amount of risk they are currently taking is what's really important. By inclusion here they all handily met the size criteria. After size how do you want to measure risk, especially in "real time". And, how to communicate that level of risk to the average encyclopedia reader? Things like "reserves", "regulatory capital", "haircuts", "value at risk", "results of stress tests" etc..... all very hard to boil down to a few meaningful columns (and very hard to keep up across the globe). Are you better off creating analytical tables about banks on a country by country basis (hard to maintain, but more easily possible)? See also: List of largest banks Stress test (financial) List of bank stress tests CAMELS rating system One more consideration - if you are going to add some "high velocity dynamic data" (say any statistic that is updated quarterly), and the data is global, it would be best to put the data in WikiDATA and then draw from that "gold copy" for each of the separate language versions of Wikipedia. That way German, French, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, etc. versions of Wikpedia all having the same page would all draw from just ONE set of master data (vs all that duplication of effort). Rick (talk) 22:48, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Pulling table from WikiData vs. WikiPedia

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Looking for ways to move the table data to WikiData so the same data serves all different language versions of WikiPedia that have this same article. Need help. Example South Pole Telescope where the info box comes from WikiData NOT en.wikipedia.com. Here is the line:

{{Infobox telescope|location=[[Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station]], [[Antarctica]]}}

Rick (talk) 20:11, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More Columns?

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Chart, if expanding columns should have data directly relevant to the level of systemic risk, and the data would need to be uniformly presented (as in a single reporting currency). The following might be very relevant:

The OFR posted a blog today by Deputy Director for Research and Analysis Stacey Schreft, entitled, “New Data Highlight Changes in Systemic Risk Posed by U.S. and Chinese Banks.” The blog says, three of the biggest U.S. banks have moved up in systemic risk ratings, according to new international data the OFR added today to its online interactive chart. The risk ratings of Chinese banks also rose, continuing a three-year trend.

The blog is posted on the OFR website at: https://www.financialresearch.gov/from-the-management-team/.

The OFR's G-SIB Scores Interactive Chart can be found at: https://www.financialresearch.gov/gsib-scores-chart/. Rick (talk) 20:11, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lead paragraph is too complex

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Focus of article is to quickly ID banks that any "large bank regulator" has officially tagged as strategically important. This spotlights to all who are interested, which banks, if they failed, might cause a large enough ripple to take down others, or cause contagion outside of the "home" regulatory area.

The lead paragraphs get into too much detail, way too quickly. Also the coverage seems too "English language" centric, and perhaps too EU/UK centric. Surely there must be at least one or more ASIAN bank regulators that have a SIFI tagging scheme? Do we have an accurate global perspective?

We are missing clear, balanced coverage of who the SIFI "tag team" members are. In the U.S. its the Fed (and OFR out of the Treasury), in U.K. its FSB, perhaps others (how about EU and EU/UK regulators especially after Britexit?). Who is it in Asia, and have they tagged banks? When and how were they tagged?

If there are multiple regulators around the globe watching SIFI banks (and they are independent of each other) the oversight will likely be optimized. Similar to international intelligence, clean interfaces and solid, but limited collaboration between regulators would likely be ideal. Large banks definitely collaborate, especially when it comes to dealing with all those who attempt to regulate them. Regulatory capture and Regulatory arbitrage are relevant related topics that can't be covered in depth in a "List of" article but are certainly important, especially when looking at this entire area from a top down, global prospective.

Rick (talk) 18:21, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

New Table for former G-SIBs

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At present, the inclusion of former G-SIBs does not make semantic sense. If they are no longer a G-SIB, they are not required to abide by the associated RWA % that they was previously prescribed to them. Further, because the defaulted sort of the table is regional, they are listed as a standard G-SIB would be which may confuse those browsing the article. I propose instead that a new table is made for these former G-SIBs, which includes the same information contained within the existing table with the exception of the RWA %.

User:Bedazzerlin (User talk:Bedazzerlin) 06:02, 04 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of a large quantity of data

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Hi, I made the WP:BOLD move of removing a large quantity of data and content from the article (see [5]), and I am going to give a explain why. This content has not been — and indeed cannot be — regularly updated: the result is that the article contained a large amount of very granular, yet out of date, data. This is not useful to readers. In addition, this data changes very frequently, and is not easily accessible and understandable. So instead of relying on the handful of competent editors who will be able to update it (until they don't), I suggest we remove it. --JBchrch (talk) 09:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Magnovvig, please join the discussion. I don't mind that you reverted me, but please note there is generally no need to build consensus prior to making bold changes.--JBchrch (talk) 11:03, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Magnovvig, I take it that you withdraw your opposition? --JBchrch (talk) 14:47, 1 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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