Treasury Finance and Development Banking: A Guide to Credit, Debt, and Risk, + Website

CHAPTER 1

An Introductory View to Banking, Development Banking, and Treasury

We have mentioned that our focus is going to be any treasury activity carried out by a traditional financial institution, a development bank, a corporation, or a government. When discussing the issuance of debt we will indeed draw examples from all four types of entities listed; however, when the objective will be a deeper understanding of several concatenated activities, we shall focus on the former two types of institution: investment banks and development banks. Furthermore, our view will narrow toward development banking not only because it is a special concern of ours but also because, in its simpler type of financial activity, it offers an opportunity to isolate clearly the different functions of a bank. A development institution that uses the tools of investment banking (we shall see in Section 1.6.1 that some do not) offers the simplest type of banking activity, a type made up of instruments upon which traditional investment banks have built increasingly more sophisticated ones; the higher level of sophistication, in our situation, does not translate necessarily to a better understanding.

In this chapter we shall introduce the fundamental activities of a financial institution as lending, borrowing, investing, and asset liability management (ALM); we shall try to present them in this order so as to follow the business line that goes from the client’s need for a loan, through the bank’s need to ...