The author is vice-chair at Oliver Wyman and former global head of banks and diversified financials research at Morgan Stanley

As we confront the need for huge capital expenditure for data centres, energy and the reshoring of industry to domestic markets, the open question is: who is going to finance it?  

Freshly emboldened US banks look set to take some of the opportunities under the more benign regulatory backdrop of the new administration in Washington. The sector’s share price gains since the US election suggest investors expect there will be more leeway in general to deploy capital more profitably. Morgan Stanley estimates that if the so-called Basel III global rules for banks are implemented in the US in a “capital neutral” way — that is with no net increase in capital demands — it could free up more than $86bn of capital for the top 12 banks for financings or buybacks.