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Main Trends of Wholesale Banking

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Identify and critically appraise the main trends that have taken place in corporate and wholesale banking over the past twenty years or so. In your answer make a critical appraisal of the effect these trends have had on the nature and structure of the industry The recent two decades witnessed the great change in the financial world. In the past, the banks might are limited with the ability of exchange foreign currency, but nowadays, it is available to exchange foreign currency at any time in most of the banks. In the past, a majority of Chinese might have no idea about HSBS, however, there are 108 branches of HSBS in China now. In the past, the banks did not sell stocks in the market, to the contrary, nowadays many commercial banks had …show more content…

New financial instruments are in need because of the unpredictability of a great number of factors, ranging from oil price, interest rates to inflation. With the application of high-tech financial instruments, the bankers are able to predict the future market and make proper decisions. Last but not least, in accordance with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) annual reports, “regulation will act as a catalyst for improving significantly the operational infrastructure of the market and modernizing the business models of many firms”. In the other words, the function of regulation is avoiding the banks to pursuit profits by taking advantage of some deficiently regulated markets. Therefore, it can be concluded that the factors, which are the rise of information technology, the instability of financial environment and the demand of regulation, determine the trend of financial innovation which can offer convenience and protection to both the banks and the customers. International banking has expended during the recent decades, and the following graph illustrates the increasing importance of the international financial activities. It can be seen that both the foreign claims and international claims take more and more percentage of the GDP. What can be account for this trend? As what mentioned by Matthews and Thompson, this phenomenon was caused by both “push factors” and “pull factors”. More specifically, they believed that the “push

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