Bankers Aren't Ready to Start Sharing Yet
European banks must make more headway on sharing costs if they don’t want to be gobbled up by rivals.
Share and share alike.
Photographer: /Hulton ArchiveThree years ago Tidjane Thiam stirred hopes that the banking industry was looking at new ways to tackle its bloated cost base. The chief executive officer of Credit Suisse Group AG said his company was working on a common platform with another lender to share expenses.
The project has made little visible progress since then, and it’s not because the pressure on banks to become more efficient has eased; there’s a deeper resistance at play here to the notion of combining or outsourcing certain functions. Neither is Thiam’s false start the exception. Citigroup Inc. and Clearstream Banking SA announced a shared settlement and custody system in 2016, but UBS Group AG is the only other bank to have joined.