"The operating environment for banks in the UK is extremely challenging and will remain so for some time," said HSBC's UK managing director Paul Thurston.
The financial environment for banks and brokerage firms remains sickly, with past profit generators like trading, underwriting and advising all slumping.
Although economic growth in the UK is expected to remain low, Moody's does not expect this to have an adverse effect on the operating environment for banks.
"This is as bad an environment for banks as I have seen in 20 years," said Thomas Hanley, a managing director at Salomon Brothers Inc., who tracks 35 large banking companies.
"These rules offer protection for consumers and a clear, safe environment for banks to do business," David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in an interview.
It's not such a rosy environment for banks once you cut a little deeper into the numbers.
Aside from favorable demographics and the allure of nationally important scale, Thursday's deal may capitalize on the current favorable regulatory environment for banks under the Trump administration.
The South Korean central bank holds ample foreign-exchange reserves as a result of the country's healthy trade surplus, but its major exporters have been hoarding dollars, betting the greenback's value would increase, making it difficult amid the tight lending environment for banks to raise dollar liquidity.
In their November 2018 emerging market report "2019 outlook broadly stable; higher rates, politics and trade tensions pose some risks," Latin American analysts wrote that "Stable economic growth will help support the operating environment for banks throughout Latin America, keeping problem loans at bay in most countries.
"The environment for consumer banking has changed," he said.
