An overview on the inconsistencies of approach in regulating the capital position of banks: Will the United Kingdom step out of line with Europe?

After the collapse of a number of banking institutions and bailouts of banks by governments, regulators have taken a different attitude and now appear keen to take regulation seriously when it comes to ensuring that banks have adequate capital and sufficient liquidity. Not only that, but in the United Kingdom, the Independent Commission on Banking Reform has made proposals with regard to the capital position of banks. This article, which is an overview, will look at matters from a UK perspective and at the proposals for reform. This article, after its introduction and summary, will look at a number of areas: first, the reforms made by Basel III; second, the regulation of Systemically Important Financial Institutions (Sifis) and the proposals for dealing with these; third, some matters in relation to lending that relate to capital and liquidity generally; fourth, increased stress testing of banks; fifth, derivatives and risk taking and the new proposed structure of regulation in the United Kingdom; sixth, the war of spin between regulators and banks; seventh, Shadow Banking; and eighth, The Independent Commission on Banking Reform and its proposals for reform. It will also be a theme that the various proposals lack consistency and that this could lead to regulatory arbitrage. It is already clear that there are inconsistencies between the various regulatory organisations, with proposals in the United Kingdom indicating that banks will be required to keep much higher levels of capital than those proposed by Basel and the European Community. The views of those who have pointed out inconsistencies between the United Kingdom and Basel/Europe have been highlighted

Experimental and Computational Icing Simulation for Large Swept Wings

The overall goal of this research was to improve the experimental and computational simulation capability for icing on large swept wings typical of commercial transports. This research included both ice-accretion and aerodynamic studies using the NASA Common Research Model (CRM) as the reference geometry. For this work, a 65-percent-scale version\u2014CRM65\u2014was used as the full-scale baseline airplane geometry. Ice-accretion testing was conducted in the Icing Research Tunnel (IRT) at the NASA Glenn Research Center using three hybrid swept-wing models representing three different stations along the span of the CRM65 wing. The three-dimensional (3D) ice-accretion geometries obtained from these test campaigns were used to evaluate the results of NASA and ONERA 3D icing simulation tools (LEWICE3D and IGLOO3D)

Promoting reuse behaviour: Challenges and strategies for repeat purchase, low-involvement products

Reusable products offer reduced environmental impact compared to recycling, but producers mostly focus on strategies such as light-weighting, recyclability and eco-labelling. A reasonable number of innovative reusable products and business models exist for repeat purchase, low-involvement products, but they are largely restricted to niche health-food stores. Therefore, this research primarily attempts to understand consumer attitudes and behaviour towards reuse of household care products (e.g. air fresheners, domestic cleaning products). Focus groups with UK consumers are utilised to examine reusable/refillable spray products and the data are triangulated with global archival data on various refill business models, reusable products and recycling initiatives. The study offers useful guidelines for both producers and policy makers to encourage reusable products. First, we recommend that eco-innovations have a familiar design congruent with well-known brands, to reduce uncertainties for consumers. Second, if the innovation has an unfamiliar design, to mitigate, producers should offer new functional benefits. Third, and most important, producers must place greater emphasis on aesthetic aspects that could evoke product attachment, thus encouraging reuse. Fourth, if reusable products are to become mainstream, ‘well-known brands’ have to promote the transition from one-off sales to a service model built on durable products. Finally, a successful outcome is dependent on government interventions in designing new life cycle policy instruments, in particular de-marketing the current recycling norm and emphasising reusing over recycling