ZURICH – The Basel II capital adequacy rules may need to be supplemented by other measures to ensure the safety of major banks following the upheavals in the global financial markets since last summer.

SYDNEY – Australia’s financial regulators made no significant changes to their final plans for applying the Pillar 2 supervisory review aspects of the three-pillar Basel II bank safety rules that came into effect on January 1.

GENEVA - China and India in particular among emerging markets need “state-of-the-art” insurance regulation to help ensure the continued expansion and prosperity of local insurance markets and their economies at large, according to research by a leading insurance industry body.

WASHINGTON – Top international bankers, seeking to ensure there is a financial industry input into the regulatory debate sparked by current financial market turmoil, expect to report finally on their proposals by June.

PARIS – A call for credit rating agencies to make a much sharper distinction in the scales used for rating bonds and structured products has come from France’s top central banker. Establishing a more marked difference between them would restore confidence in the ratings, Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, told a symposium on financial ratings in mid-December.

TEL AVIV – Israel’s revived project for adopting the Basel II bank safety rules remains an ambitious one and “it is very important that we succeed in implementing it,” Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer said in an end-year message to bankers.

LONDON – Britain’s principal financial services watchdog, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), sought to answer criticism of its role in the Northern Rock fiasco with an internal shake up designed to improve its oversight of the banking system.

LONDON – Europe’s banking regulators will from January be headed by Kerstin af Jochnick, Director of Prudential Supervision at the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, who has been elected Chairwoman of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS).

PARIS – The French securities regulator now backs the creation of a regulatory framework for credit ratings agencies (CRAs). Support for such a move emerges clearly from the latest report on rating agencies published in mid-January* by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), the French regulator.

PARIS – Islamic financial institutions display unique features relating to credit, market, funding and liquidity, and other risks, which need to be taken into account when assessing their creditworthiness, according to a report on risk management in these institutions, published by the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P).*