Banking Crises in UK Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Banking Crises in UK - Essay Example By doing so, banks are actually diverting their resources to potentially unproductive activities as the regulatory compliance may not directly provide the desired benefits in terms of monetary return. The emerging trends in the regulations in the financial as well as corporate markets are increasing in numbers and intensity as the increasing mismanagement and corporate scandals have forced regulatory authorities to look for the legal frameworks which help achieve the organizations more transparency as well as flexibility in their approach and responsibilities towards all the stakeholders in the firms. Some of the external events like the 9/11 incidents also played a major role in bringing in the new regulations into place so that traditional business channels specially the financial institutions are not being used for potentially harmful activities including terrorism. It was because of these reasons that regulations like BASEL II, Sarbanes Oxley, and The European Commissions Financial Services Action Plan were enforced to rationalize and revamp the existing regulatory framework. Thus the challenges are various to the banking sector as a whole and to the UK financial sector especially as London is now largely being considered as the international hub of the financial activities all over the world. In order to The essay will look into the present crisis banking sector is facing currently all over the world and UK especially. External environment for the UK Banking and Finance Companies In order to analyze the external environment for the UK Banking and finance companies, it is very important that we need to take a very comprehensive view of the factors involved into the overall banking scenario in the world. The globalization is taking its roots on more firm basis and it is because of this reason that the economic resources are being shifting from the more developed countries to the emerging economies such as China, Brazil, India and Russia. The emergence of the BRIC has therefore effectively shifted the economic resources and with it the economic activities therefore now since most of the activities are being performed in those geographical locations therefore like all other businesses, the banks are also shifting themselves to these locations to concentrate on the market development and penetration into these countries. (Hale, 2004). Thus the trends in globalization are forcing banks and other financial institutions in UK to face challenges from the banks working in those areas as most of the international syndications are being done by the regional banks in those regions and the overall market share of the UK Banks is shrinking. Further to this, banking sector over the period of time has seen a period of consolidation allowing a wave of mergers and acquisitions. Banks, over the period of time has improved their competencies by acquiring and merging with more efficient banks in order to gain more and more market space. Further Information technology is a new and emerging trend in the market which suggests that the banks are increasingly becoming more competitive in this area.(Grealish,2004) One of the most important challenges that are being faced by the UK Banks is the fact that the impact of US subprime mortgages is going to hit or have already hit the UK banks. The subprime mortgage crisis which has started into US is slowly being engulfing