Delegates split after bankers claim financial system’s safety improved

Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins and HSBC chairman Douglas Flint said the financial system’s safety has improved in the past five years, splitting delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Banks have three to six times more capital than they did before the financial crisis, and the quality of that capital is “significantly enhanced,” Mr Flint said at a panel that saw the two British bankers debate Paul Singer, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who runs New York-based Elliott Management, and Stanford University professor Anat Admati, the author of The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking.

Since the financial crisis, Davos has become a yearly sparring match between bankers and their critics.