Banking for Growth

The absence of a robust small and medium-sized ("SMEs") formal business sector - or the "missing middle" - has long been identified as both a contributing factor and a distinguishing characteristic of many countries. Many reasons have been advanced to explain the "missing middle" including the inability of SMEs to access bank-based credit. This book compares the relative merits of recent legal reforms that have emerged to address the lack of bank-based credit by considering the way in which recent reforms support the independent and interactive roles of the stakeholders to the financial intermediation process. An historical description and comparison of the laws impacting the various stakeholders to bank-based financial intermediation in Canada, the United States, Britain and Taiwan provides the foundation on which the analysis of current reforms which encourage "downscaling" of commercial banks and/or "upscaling" of microcredit lenders are considered."