Whether it’s a crisis of capitalism or a crisis that edged off from the fundamental values of capitalism, the latter two months fuelled panic among many players and economic analysts. Wall-Street polled 10 top managers and analysts in investment field, equity market and real-estate to reveal the ten most relevant lessons to learn from the current financial crisis that is generating serious events.
‘When, how, where and why the crisis is emerging, is unpredictable – that is the beauty of free markets’
In one of the most dramatic days in the history of Wall Street, September 15, 2008, Bank of America accepted to buy Merrill Lynch for 50 billion US dollars, in order to avoid a deeper financial crisis, and Lehman Brothers made public its bankruptcy.
“I’ve been in the business 35 years, and these are the most extraordinary events I’ve ever seen,” said Peter G. Peterson, co-founder of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group. What were the lessons to learn from the past two months for the top investment managers in Romania?
“Honestly, I didn’t realize at that time, it took me a few days to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem. I have the same feeling as in two moments in the recent history of Romania: ‘91-‘92 when the foreign currency was confiscated and ‘98-‘99 when the country was on the brink of freezing payments. From this standpoint, I may have experiences that other people didn’t live so far, and this gives me a certain detachment to the panic sentiment that swept off the economic environment,” said Doru Lionachescu, primary partner at Capital Partners.
The investment banker has an interesting viewpoint in this matter, stating that this situation is in fact a failure of the regulation policies, and not of the markets, given the fact that the major problems have not emerged, as it was thought initially, in the non-regulated areas –
