Too Big … to Fail? … to Manage? Get Smaller

For months companies such as Citigroup, American International Group, Bank of America and others have been shedding various business across the globe.  These operations have recently been categorized as non-core or not strategic to the ongoing business.  I wholeheartedly expect many of these institutions to continue to shrink and refocus.

While I am not in complete agreement with all of the methods used by the financial leaders, I do believe they did successfully navigate us through an unprecedented crisis and pulled our global financial system back from the precipice.  Along the way, however, these institutions became even larger, despite addressing a systemic risk at that time.  This was a concern then and remains a challenge.  But my thought is one step at a time, after all, it is triage.

Can these institutions be effectively managed?  Is it possible to adequately regulate these companies?  Can the true risk of these institutions be properly assessed?

A …