Banks' activities can be divided into retail banking, dealing directly with individuals and small businesses; business banking, providing services to mid-market business; corporate banking, directed at large business entities; private banking, providing wealth management services to High Net Worth Individuals and families; and investment banking, relating to activities on the financial markets. Most banks are profit-making, private enterprises. However, some are owned by government, or are non-profits.
Central banks are normally government owned banks, often charged with quasi-regulatory responsibilities, e.g. supervising commercial banks, or controlling the cash interest rate. They generally provide liquidity to the banking system and act as Lender of last resort in event of a crisis.
The economic functions of banks include:
1. issue of money, in the form of banknotes and current accounts subject to cheque or payment at the customer's order. These claims on banks can act as money because they are negotiable and/or repayable on demand, and hence valued at par and effectively transferable by mere delivery in the case of banknotes, or by drawing a cheque, delivering it to the payee to bank or cash.
2. netting and settlement of payments -- banks act both as collection agent and paying agents for customers, and participate in inter-bank clearing and settlement systems to collect, present, be presented with, and pay payment instruments. This enables banks to economise on reserves held for settlement of payments, since inward and outward payments offset each other. It also enables payment flows between geographical areas to offset, reducing the cost of settling payments between geographical areas.
3. credit intermediation -- banks borrow and lend back-to-back on their own account as middle men
4. credit quality improvement -- banks lend money to ordinary commercial and personal borrowers (ordinary credit quality), but are high quality borrowers. The improvement comes from diversification of the bank's assets and the bank's own capital which provides a buffer to absorb losses without defaulting on its own obligations. However, since banknotes and deposits are generally unsecured, if the bank gets into difficulty and pledges assets as security to try to get the funding it needs to continue to operate, this puts the note holders and depositors in an economically subordinated position.
5. maturity transformation -- banks borrow more on demand debt and short term debt, but provide more long term loans. Bank can do this because they can aggregate issues (e.g. accepting deposits and issuing banknotes) and redemptions (e.g. withdrawals and redemptions of banknotes), maintain reserves of cash, invest in marketable securities that can be readily converted to cash if needed, and raise replacement funding as needed from various sources (e.g. wholesale cash markets and securities markets) because they have a high and more well known credit quality than most other borrowers.
Vocabulary
| Banknotes | банкноты |
| Current | Текущие |
| Account | Счет |
| Payment | Платеж |
| Claim | Требование |
| Negotiable | Проходимый |
| Transferable | Допускающий передачу |
| Dilivery | Доставлять |
| Participate | Участвовать |
| Lend | Давать взаймы |
| Improvement | Улучшение |
| Diversification | Разнообразие |
| Assets | Активы |
| Absorb | Поглощать |
| Losses | Потери |
| Security | Гарантия, безопасность |
| Holder | Владелец |
| loans | Ссуда |
Questions:
1. How can banks' activities be divided? What do they deal with? (Dwell on each item.)
2. What are quasi-regulatory responsibilities of central banks?
3. How do central banks act in event of a crisis?
4. What do the economic functions of banks include?
5. In what form do banks issue money?
6. What is netting and settlement of payments? (Dwell on netting and settlement of payments)
7. What is credit intermediation? (Dwell on credit intermediation)
8. What is credit quality improvement? (Dwell on credit quality improvement)
9. What is maturity transformation? (Dwell on maturity transformation)
Тopic 10
Management
Management in business and human organization activity, in simple terms means the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. Management comprises planning, organizing, resourcing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.
Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the act(s) of management.
The verb manage comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle — especially a horse), which in turn derives from the Latin manus (hand). The French word mesnagement (later ménagement) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933), who wrote on the topic in the early twentieth century, defined management as "the art of getting things done through people". One can also think of management functionally, as the action of measuring a quantity on a regular basis and of adjusting some initial plan; or as the actions taken to reach one's intended goal. This applies even in situations where planning does not take place. From this perspective, Frenchman Henri Fayol considers management to consist of five functions:
1. planning
2. organizing
3. leading
4. co-ordinating
5. controlling
Some people, however, find this definition, while useful, far too narrow. The phrase "management is what managers do" occurs widely, suggesting the difficulty of defining management, the shifting nature of definitions, and the connection of managerial practices with the existence of a managerial cadre or class.
One habit of thought regards management as equivalent to "business administration" and thus excludes management in places outside commerce, as for example in charities and in the public sector. More realistically, however, every organization must manage its work, people, processes, technology, etc. in order to maximize its effectiveness. Nonetheless, many people refer to university departments which teach management as "business schools." Some institutions (such as the Harvard Business School) use that name while others (such as the Yale School of Management) employ the more inclusive term "management."
Speakers of English may also use the term "management" or "the management" as a collective word describing the managers of an organization, for example of a corporation. Historically this use of the term was often contrasted with the term "Labor" referring to those being managed.
