David McWilliams hit an interesting point in today’s piece in the Independent about having ‘too much regulation’, and how it may repel new banks from coming here.
in late 2009 I was picked as part of a team that approached PostBank with a view to turning it into an SME business bank – our proposal never even made it as far as board meetings because they were determined to close down rather than continue, we found the whole process perverse at best.
Instead the same investor group will be setting up in the UK, meaning SME’s in Ireland lose out on funding.
It isn’t that new banks don’t want to come here, it is that they are routinely put off from doing so via the Central Bank and the way in which we grant banking licences in this country.
The other regulatory issue is Basel III.
Asking a bank during a time like this to …