But he said he was against one of the key issues the ICB is examining - that of splitting a bank's retail operations from its investment arm - saying that a lot of the banking sector's problems were caused by simple bad investment decisions.

BBC: Richard Lambert

The takeover, as well as the bank's "aggressive expansion" into investment banking, was singled out by the FSA as a bad call.

BBC: RBS logo

Instead of trying to expand into investment banking, a business with juicy margins in good times but horrible losses in bad, Erste Bank has instead concentrated on expanding its retail banking business into central and eastern Europe, where it has subsidiaries stretching from Austria to Ukraine.

ECONOMIST: Face value

Since half of China's banking assets are believed to have gone bad, any kind of slowdown in investment or growth could cause social turmoil.

FORBES: Issues & Ideas