Who Are the Clients and What Are They Doing?

If the role of a bank is to intermediate, provide liquidity and take risk, what we then need to understand is why these roles are important. To do that we look at the clients of the bank and what their needs are. The starting point for understanding the different clients that a major bank deals with on the trading floor is to classify clients into different types (Figure 2.5). The first major distinction is between individuals (also called retail), companies and government entities. Among the companies there is then a distinction between financial companies and corporates. This distinction is made because financial companies are in the business of transacting in the financial markets, whereas this ...

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