Banks, organisational memory and financial crises

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• MERCATOR: The Memory of Financial Crises: Financial Actors and Global Risk

Join Youssef Cassis and Giuseppe Teleseca as they analyse the extent to which the recent memories of the 2007– 2008 financial crisis could have boosted the panic surrounding financial markets in the past weeks.

The recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and the takeover of banking giant Credit Suisse by UBS, 'orchestrated’ by the Swiss financial and monetary authorities, have sent shock-waves throughout the financial markets and triggered references to the Global Financial Crisis. It has been argued that (relatively) fresh memories of the 2007– 2008 meltdown could have been one of the factors explaining the panic which has gripped financial markets in the last weeks.

Time seems therefore ripe to consider how banks deal with the memory of financial crises or major scandals. Do they try to remember and learn from them, transforming crises in lieux de memoire? Or do they try to forget them, transforming crises in lieux d’oubli? Is it possible to generalise banks’ attitude, or does each bank deal differently when it comes to the role that crises play in the construction of its past? And can the same institution take different stances regarding past crises depending on the circumstances? This seminar reflects on the organisational memory of banks when it comes to crises, and its connection with the memory of single bankers.