ralph silva is the director of the silva research network. he joins us now in our london studio to figure out what could have caused this. first of all, the figure, ralph, it's enormous. >> it is. the amount that this one actually represents is completely unheard of. we've only had three or four other situations where we've had in the billions and that's what happened here. >> such, for instance, nick leeson in the '90s. >> it could be one of three things. it's still early. the first one is what the industry calls fat fingers, put in an extra zero. >> or she. >> yes. instead of buying a million, he or she bought 10 million. the second one the industry calls stupidity. he took a position he or she shouldn't have taken it. the third one, which is the one we're all afraid of, this was strictly fraud. he was doing this to make sure somebody else would make money. we don't know which one of those three it was. >> we have absolutely no indication this could be the case. what about hedging positions as well? we spoke earlier on on the telephone at th

ralph silva joins us with more, the director of the silva research network. the boss of deutsche bank was saying at a conference about 24 hours ago that he thought some of the weaker banks would go to the wall as a result of this crisis. is that a statement of the bleeding obvious as we say here or is it actually simply that something that really should shock us? >> it is a bleeding obvious, to be quite honest with you. we anticipate about 30% of the world's banking brands will disappear within the next five years. the reason is simple. there's a massive oversupply of banking products in the world today. we don't need to go into branches as much. most of the technology is in play that we could do our transactions without having to talk to people. we need much fewer of the banks. >> you're talking about the retail sector, the small business sector, if you like, the consumer facing and small business facing side. what about the investment side. >> you don't need -- it doesn't take as long to do an investment banking deal as it did ten years ago. communications