The Rise (and Fall) of National Banking Champions (Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Early Twenty-First Centuries)

As it matters, many of the leading banks in western countries became large in their home base and beyond, because of their colonial or other historical heritage, including the Bank of Montreal (Canada), the British HSBC, Credit Suisse of Switzerland, the Dutch ABN AMRO and Deutsche Bank (Germany). Salient is the latter’s 2002–2012 CEO, the Swiss Josef Ackermann—a moneymaker and a diplomat in one. Especially after World War II and before the Global Financial Crisis of around 2010, banks were juggling on thin lines between creative deal making and unethical tactics, growing too big and making desperate central bankers having to save and slash many of them.