Germany must modernise to recover strength
Business desk leader
THE FACT that Scotland is now nearly three times bigger as a banking centre than Germany speaks volumes.
Not only does it tell us about the remarkable agility of the former Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland, which have left their bloated European peers standing in the wake of their strategic focus and deft handling of mergers and acquisitions.
But it also highlights the dire performance of most European banks, especially of those in Germany, and more broadly of the German economy as a whole.
The one-time 'powerhouse' of the European economy was for most of the 1990s also a leading banking centre -- just look at the glitzy towers built in Frankfurt to house the headquarters of Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank.
But Germany, its economy in crisis, must now face the ignominity of having plummeted to the ninth-largest banking centre in Europe -- after much smaller economies such as Spain, Netherlands, Belgium and Scotland, for heavens's sake.
Commerzbank, Germany's third largest bank and a key lender to the Germany's 'mittelstand' of small and medium-sized businesses, last week posted a Û372m pre-tax loss, the first in the bank's history. A combination of high costs, soaring bad debts and paper-thin margins are conspiring to bring about Germany's worst banking crisis since the 1939-45 war.
It is not so long ago when the likes of the former Observer editor Will Hutton were wont to evangelise about the German business model. The way the nation's banks supported home-grown SME's with a mixture of large shareholdings and loans was seen by such liberal-leaning thinkers as a recipe for economic success. Our harder-nosed 'Anglo-Saxon' economic and business model was, by contrast, seen as driving short-termism and stunting productivity.
But today you don't hear many such claims for the superiority of Germany's system.
The critical problem facing the German financial services market is overcapacity. With its network of state owned landesbank's coupled with larger players such as Deutsche Bank and Commerz, Germany is massively over banked. As the economic tide floods out, the banks have been left stranded and vulnerable, with far too many staff and too many dodgy, unproductive loans. There are disturbing parallels with Japan.
Business failures in Germany are expected to continue soaring, with economists predicting 42,000 German businesses will go bust in 2003, up from 37,700 last year.
This is only going to exacerbate the trend of rising unemployment. Germany's Federal Labour Office said the unemployment rate rose to 10.3% in January from 10.1% a month earlier. Many of Germany's major companies have laid off thousands of staff in an attempt to cope with the prolonged economic downturn.
It all has serious ramifications for the banks, which directly finance German companies to far greater extent than their UK counterparts.
To the dismay of the rest of Europe, which risks being sucked into recession with Germany, the economic miracle seems to be turning into a chimera.
Manufacturers are shifting production to lower-cost economies in Asia, which has made it tough for economists to identify the bottom, as Germany's economy remains so heavily dependent on manufacturing. Sooner or later, the pain will become so acute that Germany will have to grasp the long-resisted nettle of structural reforms.
Oil players have vital role as war looms WORKING with black gold has never been easy. However, in the current economic and political environment even educated guesses on the oil sector's future embrace uncertainty.
The question of what will happen to oil prices before, during and after any war in Iraq is a hugely complex one. Oil giants such as BP will have spent a great deal of time and money working out possible scenarios, but no inter national player is prepared to comment on war or its possible aftermath.
Before the last Gulf War in 1991 the economic picture was very different and oil prices were around $15 a barrel. When the allied forces invaded Iraq prices spiked to $40 and then dropped back to $18 within weeks; a simplistic analysis of the situation in 2003 would offer up a similar series of events following a new conflict in the country.
Unfortunately, our thinking now must be more rigorous. Yes, a 'successful' war in Iraq would offer the US access -- eventually -- to oil reserves nearly as large as Saudi Arabia's, and thus weaken the status of the world's largest oil producer (a country already quietly suffering from political turmoil) and of the oil cartel, OPEC.
But once the effects of political and economic disruption in Venezuela, low levels of excess production capacity and small inventories are factored in, only a fool would attempt to predict which direction oil prices will head.
Looking at the picture closer to home the uncertainty that currently pervades the sector is bound to have consequences in the longer term.
Some industry analysts highlight the gains that could be made by small independent exploration firms as majors such as Shell and BP reduce their exposure to mature and costly assets such as the North Sea. On the back of this, oil service companies may also benefit from investment from other quarters. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that such gains will outstrip the spend by the established operators.
The cut in the price of exploration licences proposed last week by energy minister Brian Wilson would also be a useful tool in stimulating new investment, although its effectiveness should not be over-estimated.
What should soften the blow of continuing uncertainty, in Scotland and internationally, is the natural confidence of virtually all oil players. In the months ahead, pessimism could do significant damage to already weakened markets. Tempered with common sense this confidence could yet prove vital in offering global stability.
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