MACMILLAN UK Banks and the Lessons of the Great Financial Crisis (Building a Sustainable Political Economy: SPERI Research & Policy)

This book demonstrates the variation in the reaction of the UK’s ‘big four’ banks – RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC – to the Great Financial Crisis 2008. Over a decade on from the financial crisis, this book asks: have banks in the UK learned lessons from the crisis? Bank learning in the UK after the Great Financial Crisis is something we need to know more about. Whether banks are now safer and more likely to aid rather than disrupt the economy are important questions of social relevance. Through a documentary analysis of Britain’s ‘big four’ banks in the post-crisis decade (2008–2018), this book demonstrates that while some institutions have become more risk averse and display positive signs of learning, others have shown little evidence of change. The book uses notions of agency, path dependency and structural competitive pressures to explain these inter-bank variations of behaviour. This book contributes to wider post-crash structural debates about growth, markets, and regulatory reform, showing how the agency of banks has played a vital role in driving the reform process.  Review ‘Barber’s book offers a hugely important contribution to the field of political economy – and social science more generally. The novel “learning” framework Barber applies to UK banks in the wake of the 2008 crisis is both sensible and innovative, and enables a fresh set of insights about the diverse – and diversifying – characteristics of the UK banking sector. I have learned a lot from Barber’s research, and the book deserves to be widely read’. ― Craig Berry, Future Economies Research Centre, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK ‘Adam Barber observes that regulators, bankers and politicians have all promised to learn lessons from the 2008 financial crisis. This book asks whether, more than a decade on, they have done so. The answer he provides is nuanced and convincing and moves us beyond the binary alternatives of arguing that everything has changed or that nothing has changed’. ―Andrew Hindmoor, Deputy Vice President, Education, University of Sheffield, UK ‘Britain’s “Big Four” banks – RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC – were at the centre of the maelstrom of 2008. In this book, Adam Barber expertly charts how the crisis impacted differentially on the business models and internal governance structures of these major banking institutions. Extensive empirical work and a robust theoretical framework combine to illuminate important continuities and changes within these systemically important financial institutions. This book will be of great utility to anyone interested in banking, finance, institutionalism, British political economy as well as the wider legacy of the 2008 crash’.  ―Scott Lavery, Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, UK From the Back Cover The devastating events that beset financial markets in the summer of 2007 led to a huge contraction in global economic output and left the financial and banking systems in the core economies of the United Kingdom, United States and Europe on the brink of destruction. The ensuing fallout from arguably the greatest crisis in the history of financial capitalism has led to a series of protracted global economic and political crises. Over a decade on from the Great Financial Crisis 2008, this book asks: have banks in the UK learned lessons from the financial crisis? Bank learning in the UK after the financial crisis is something we need to know more about. Whether banks are now safer and more likely to aid rather than disrupt the economy are important questions of social relevance. Using original empirical research, this book reveals the learning experience of the UK’s ‘big four’ banks – RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC and the veracity of these approaches. Adam Barber is Senior Research Associate at the Future Economies Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. About the A