Professor Gregory Connor:

With hindsight, it does not take much insight for the Financial Regulator to enforce concentration ratios on commercial property. I suspect that in almost all of the domestic banks some knowledgeable person was saying "yikes, our exposure to property development is enormous and really risky". Property development consists of nothing more than holes in the ground and half built buildings, unlike a mortgage on a residential property that has somebody living it. It is a very risky operation to have all that concentrated risk. I do not think we need new procedures because it is dead obvious with hindsight, and was probably obvious at the time.