With costs varying greatly for different bank services, companies are seldom given insight into what drives their banks’ fee structures and often can feel held hostage to high bank fees with no mechanism to address it.

Particularly since the crisis began and liquidity became tight, companies have often focused more on simple liquidity availability than in bartering for the best fee structure for that access to capital.

US corporates may have an easier time that their European counterparts when it comes to future bank lending as banks begin to gear up for new capital requirements under Basel III.  

However, the actual impact is as yet unclear, in particular as few analysts can agree on the impact of risk-weighted asset reductions on the amount of equity that banks will need to hold to meet tier one capital ratio requirements under the new guidelines.