Capital idea

Who’s afraid of Basel 2? Not Alliance & Leicester. The UK mortgage bank has become one of Europe’s first financial institutions to embrace the new capital standards. It has got consent from the UK regulator, the Financial Services Authority, to adopt Basel 2 a year before the deadline for the entire sector. The haste makes good sense. The new standards are a boon for all mortgage banks. They set a lower reserve requirement for loans secured against property than the current Basel I standards. T...