Investment banks, we are told, have learnt the lessons of the financial crisis. This includes the need to revive a culture of relationship-based banking so conspicuously absent during the structured product and credit-fuelled boom years. Apparently ever so humble heads of investment banks around the world have lined up to assure clients, politicians, regulators and the electorates now paying the price of the financial industry’s binge that they and their organisations have changed for good.
However, the genetic engineering that produced a generation of bankers so perfectly adapted to the generation of huge bonuses and stratospheric profits is not proving easy to squeeze back into the test tube. A couple of examples highlight how little appears to have changed.
Italy’s electricity utility Enel listed its renewable energy arm Enel Green Power on the Italian and Spanish stock exchanges. This initial public offering was notable not only for being the largest in Europe this year – raising €2.6bn ($3.5bn) – but also for the extraordinary behaviour of some the 10 banks hired to execute the deal.