CAPE TOWN/ LONDON – Defending revisions to the new liquidity rules for banks, Stefan Ingves, chairman of the Basel Committee, which crafted them, said it was “simplistic” to describe the changes as a “win for the banking industry over the regulators,” as some headline writers have done.

NEW YORK – William Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, made it very clear to bankers recently that regulators are determined to see through further reforms in the wholesale funding markets and the shadow banking sector. Although much has been done over the past few years to mitigate the structural flaws that make wholesale funding a point of weakness in the global financial system, some important issues and vulnerabilities remain, he told a New York banking audience in early February. Despite the “worthwhile steps taken thus far, we have not come close to fixing all the institutional flaws in our wholesale funding markets.”

BRUSSELS – The EU is mulling changes to bank capital rules in a bid to spur long-term investment threatened by the bloc’s sovereign-debt crisis, reported Bloomberg News in late January. It said the European Commission will seek views on whether “particular types of long-term investments merit preferential capital requirements,” according to draft plans obtained by Bloomberg News. The EU’s executive arm is also said to be weighing options to stimulate the market for covered bonds and high-quality securitised debt.

FRANKFURT/ BERLIN – The European Central Bank (ECB) has given a relatively cautious response to last October’s proposals from the High-level Expert Group on ring-fencing EU banks’ risky trading activities. At the same time Germany has joined France in drafting legislation for a rather weaker national approach to banking sector restructuring, according to local news media.

LONDON – The “shocking cost” of Europe’s planned Solvency II insurance regime is indefensible and ever rising, an exasperated top UK regulator said in February.

LONDON – British banks that fail to shield their retail banking from risk investment activities could be broken up under legislation introduced by the UK’s coalition government in February.

TORONTO, Canada – Plans for the global financial trade-tagging system called for by world leaders to help prevent any repeat of the trading chaos seen during the financial crisis, took a major step forward in January with the appointment of a US official, Matthew Reed, to head the system.

ZURICH – Reforms pledged by world leaders four years ago at the height of the global financial crisis to make the financial system safer are still far from being completed, according to top global regulator Mark Carney.

BASEL – Policymakers should think about requiring residential mortgage providers and mortgage insurers to align their interests, given that mortgage insurance is liable to great stress in extreme financial crises, according to global financial regulators.

BASEL – Financial firms are more worried about the costs of complying with politically sensitive pay and reward rules rather than with level-playing-field problems, according to global regulators.