A top Goldman Sachs executive has warned that the drive to impose more regulation on banks could create the next crisis by pushing risky activities towards hedge funds and other lightly supervised entities.
The comments by Gary Cohn, Goldman’s most senior executive after chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, come as banks around the world, emboldened by recovering profits and surging markets, intensify their efforts to shape financial regulation.
At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Mr Cohn, Goldman’s president, criticised regulators’ focus on traditional institutions and urged them to look at the effects of new rules on the whole financial system.