Taking risk to the top office

Hit by billions of dollars in subprime writedowns, banks are looking at how best to organise their risk management functions. Steve White makes a far-reaching proposal

Sell-side organisations can be defined as those that use their own capital as a raw material, and add value with their risk management, product development and service provision expertise to facilitate a wider range of activities in the financial markets.

The economic value-added of an investment bank can be decomposed into the acquisition of market intelligence regarding the supply and demand of its financial products - clearly a front-office function - and the quantification of the capital at