Many bankers see evidence of the first theory in Europe, where politicians and regulators have recently signalled a willingness to relax certain new rules, for example regarding the obligatory “ringfencing” of retail banking from riskier investment banking in the UK. “One of the things that European [policymakers] have done, which is quite damaging to the infrastructure, is reining back the European investment banks,” says Colm Kelleher, investment banking chief at Morgan Stanley. Other bankers cling to the second argument — that we are experiencing a healthy return to normal. Sergio Ermotti, chief executive of UBS, says: “When we look back to the mid-90s [and] over the last 15 years, we saw a lot of banks doing a me-too strategy, trying to be everything to everybody, changing their DNAs, doing things they weren’t equipped to do. [That] was the anomaly.”

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/8e45c69e-8226-11e5-a01c-8650859a4767.html#axzz3r9BLYS4P