Financial Regulatory Forum

    DUBLIN, April 21 (Reuters) – Ireland’s financial regulator said the strict new capital levels Irish banks must meet will cushion losses on smaller loans and not just the riskier batches being moved to the country’s “bad bank.” (more…)

By Dominic Lau

LONDON, Jan 26 (Reuters) – Stricter global banking rules will add to short-term headwinds facing European banks and hurt their shares, yet details being hammered out could make them more alluring for more risk-averse long-term investors.

The Basel Committee of central bankers and financial supervisors is seeking to avoid a repeat of the credit crunch and reduce the industry’s cyclical volatility by raising the quality of banks’ capital, after many of the assets they were using crumbled during the crisis.

U.S. President Barack Obama has also laid out rules to restrict some banks’ most lucrative operations.

– The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own –

By Wei Gu

HONG KONG, Jan 13 (Reuters Breakingviews) – A month before China ushers in the year of the Tiger, the central bank has begun to address the effects of its roaring liquidity boom. It is encouraging that the authorities in Beijing are aware of the threat of an overheating financial system. But with so many countervailing forces, the liquidity tiger will not be tamed so easily.

Markets yelped on Tuesday after the central bank raised the minimum ratio of capital to loans at banks by 50 basis points. But this is little more than scooping water out of the sea. Some 1 trillion yuan ($146 billion) of government bills mature in the next two weeks. If they are not rolled over, three times more money would flow into the system than the reserve hike will leech out. Then there are foreign speculative flows — an estimated 378 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2009.

   By Emma Thomasson
   ZURICH, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Swiss bank UBS <UBSN.VX> said new capital rules could put the country’s financial industry at an international disadvantage as it struggles to rebrand itself after bank secrecy was relaxed. (more…)

    HELSINKI, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Capital supports in Finland’s banking sector are strong enough to cushion it against crisis even if the economy turns clearly weaker than forecast in 2010-2011, the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority said. (more…)

    FRANKFURT, Sept 24 (Reuters) – Regulators mulling changes to bank capital buffers should keep the big picture in mind and not change any rules until the crisis is resolved, Germany’s Bundesbank warned on Thursday.
   Bundesbank Vice-President Franz-Christoph Zeitler said regulators had to keep the impact of the long list of proposed bank reforms in mind. (more…)

   By Helen Popper
   BUENOS AIRES, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The idea of a simple leverage ratio to help anticipate financial crises is unlikely to work, European Central Bank governing council member Christian Noyer said on Tuesday.
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