HSBC’s Green: world needs banks ‘big enough to cope’

Structure is more important than size in determining the risk a bank poses to the financial system, HSBC’s chairman Stephen Green stated at the bank’s results meeting on March 1.

“The discussion has taken on an unhelpful shorthand of ‘too big to fail’ but reality is more complex than this headline,” said Green.” It is important to recognise that, for those institutions that failed, corporate structure and liquidity management were at least as important as size per se.”

Instead of reforms that