On the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, the front page of the Financial Times carried a photograph of John Thain, the then chief executive of Merrill Lynch. He was getting into his car after hours of talks at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and looked like a man who had stared into the abyss. In the following days more pictures would emerge of bankers leaving crisis meetings with policymakers, their ashen faces a portent of the horror to come.
As coronavirus rages and brings the global economy to a near standstill, bankers are once again roaming the corridors of power. In early March, Donald Trump summoned the chief executives of Bank of America, Citigroup and other large lenders to the White House, while Rishi Sunak, the UK chancellor, has held meetings and calls with their counterparts in Britain.
But this time is different, bankers say. Rather than being admonished for their role in causing the 2008 crisis, they are being called on to help distribute unprecedented stimulus programmes worth trillions of dollars designed to save the global economy from collapse. Although governments and central banks are providing much of the cash, lenders are being asked to serve as the “transmission mechanism” to ensure support finds its way to the companies and consumers who need it most.