Business gurus and fashion stylists advise playing to your strengths. So why do many banks seem to follow the more motherly advice of giving it a go and doing one’s best? They do this in spite of heaps of evidence that banks often destroy shareholder value in businesses where scale or expertise is lacking. In a recent Oliver Wyman analysis of top global banks, about a fifth of revenues from up to 15 business lines made no economic profit at all. Twice as many businesses were “quite accretive”. But by far the best returns (and 40 per cent of revenues) came from just eight to 10 areas.
商業大師和時尚造型師建議人們要揚長避短。可為何有那么多銀行似乎在遵循“大膽嘗試并盡己所能”這一更具母性的建議？有大量證據顯示，銀行在缺乏專業知識或一定規模的領域開展業務，往往會損害股東價值，但各銀行仍樂此不疲。奧緯咨詢(Oliver Wyman)最近對全球頂級銀行的一項分析顯示，在多達15條業務線中，大約五分之一的營收是完全沒有經濟利潤的。兩倍于此的業務具有“相當大的增值性”。但遙遙領先的最高回報（占總營收40%）僅來自其中的8至10個領域。