As non-US companies, mainly in Europe, accumulated dollars from exports to the US and from oil sales, financiers realized they could borrow and lend in these dollars, which would be outside the control of European governments because they had not issued the currency. UK banks were keen as early as 1957 to mobilize their dollar-denominated deposits, as the chronic balance-of-payments deficit forced the government to impose controls on their use of sterling for foreign transactions.
