The US is planning a route to adopting IFRS by 2014; ensuring that the standard-setter remains honest is a top priority

Banks did not achieve in their 2007 annual reports the transparency that users of financial statements are demanding, according to a top auditing firm. Despite banks expanding their disclosures in areas most affected by the credit crunch and complying generally with accounting standards, disclosures gave a less cohesive picture of banks’ position on risk, for example, than the market is demanding, a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found*.

A gamekeeper-turned-poacher wants a federal option for US insurers. Critics say Solvency II is the stuff of sub-prime crises

America’s current system of insurance regulation means the nation’s representatives cannot bind US supervisors to standards developed at international level, according to former top US regulator Alessandro Iuppa. He told the Senate’s influential banking committee that this is just one of the results of the state-based regulatory system that’s prevailed for more than 135 years and which needs urgent reform.

As payment and settlement systems become ever more interlinked, the risks are increasing. Anita Bradshaw sees recession diverting banks from a critical problem

th the case for self-regulation apparently running out of steam, the European Union’s executive arm, the Brussels-based European Commission, wants to establish what the regulatory and supervisory arrangements are for post-trade services for share trading in all 27 EU member states.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming, August 22 (Global Risk Regulator) – America’s central bank chief says excessive risk taking and yet greater systemic risk could result if no “countervailing actions” are taken to address the moral hazard consequences of recent official actions taken in response to the credit crisis.

As Islamic financial markets expand, standardised regulation gets pressing. That could be a problem for more secular countries By Oonagh Leighton

LONDON – There is no significant divergence in the content of the liquidity risk management consultation paper released in June by the Basel Committee and the paper simultaneously issued by the key body of European supervisors that advise EU policy makers on bank regulation. That is the firm contention of the senior French supervisor leading the team that drafted the European paper.

BASEL – Tough new rules are being proposed by regulators on the Basel Committee to ensure banks properly safeguard in future against the kind of trading risks that exacerbated the year-old global financial crisis. Under guidelines issued in a mid-July consultation paper,* the more sophisticated banks that model risks in their trading book will have to capture a wider range of such risks – risks not captured in their conventional Value-at-Risk (VaR) models and referred to by the Basel Committee as “incremental” risks.