Major global banks confident of tiding over financial crisis

The banks provided the 'living wills' road maps that were requested by US regulators to help the banks' liquidation in a financial crisis.

The 'living wills' were required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul to help end the perception that such firms are "too big to fail," and to avert a repeat of the 2008 like situation, when government paid billions of dollars of taxpayer money to banks.

More than 100 large financial firms are required by the law to submit "living wills" to the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) by the end of 2013.

The FDIC and the Federal Reserve released the public section yesterday which identifies main business plans and financial information of the banking entities.

As part of the mandatory disclosure, nine of the biggest firms with assets in the US, such as Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS disclosed the glimpse of the financial plans.

These plans disclosed by financial institutions suggests that they could be recapitalised or shut down without any cost on taxpayers or any major negative impact on the economic system.

Citigroup, which took USD 45 billion from the government in 2008 crisis, said it would be better to sell the bank's brokerage businesses before the parent company became insolvent. It also said its banking business could be split off from the parent firm and recapitalised in a smaller bank.

In a bid to recover from the crisis, Citigroup has been selling its non-core businesses.

"Citi is today a fundamentally different institution than it was before the crisis: smaller, leaner, safer, sounder, and completely focused on our core mission," it said.

Bank of America said in its plan that "certain assets and liabilities would be transferred to a bridge bank that would, subject to certain assumptions, emerge from resolution as a viable going concern."

Another major entity JPMorgan Chase & Co said," the Resolution Plan would not require extraordinary government support, and would not result in losses being borne by the US government."