Imagine you’re David Darnell or Tom Montag at Bank of America. You have just been promoted to run the bank’s consumer businesses in the case of the former or the investment bank in Mr Montag’s case. Cost cutting is a priority. Already your boss has said publicly that up to 30,000 jobs will be reduced across BofA’s consumer bits before the knife turns to investment banking. Understandably, you want to delay the hard decisions: so you get started with Asia.
Predicting the future of banking is tricky, but one thing for certain is that as the developed world begins a long period of deleveraging, fast-growing regions such as Asia simply must have deeper and more sophisticated financial systems. For BofA, Asia is already outperforming all other markets in terms of growth. Even excluding China (BofA owns 5 per cent of China Construction Bank), its total exposure to Asia exceeded that of all other emerging markets combined last year.
So when Mr Darnell compares his 550-odd wealth advisers in Asia with the 15,500 in the US, say, it seems obvious where the axe is more likely to fall. Indeed, the reality is that anything consumer-facing stands a better chance of success in Asia than in BofA’s home market. The trickier decisions, therefore, are to be found in investment banking. That is because while BofA is pumping talent into the region – for example, five new business heads have started since 2010 and 80 per cent of the MSCI Asia Pacific index is now covered by the bank’s equity analysts – so is everyone else.