With a Basel Committee paper on credit risk assessment due soon, BIS experts argue for decoupling the aims of accounting

The US seems to be softening over its insistence on 100% collateral from foreign reinsurers. EU Commission in talks with American counterparts. But there\'s a long way to go.

Will Basel II be the catalyst for a global insurance solvency standard? David Keefe looks at the pros and cons

Expert regulators expect to issue their next paper on the vexed subject of valuing insurance liabilities, which is crucial to measuring insurer solvency, in the second quarter of next year.

Bankers alarmed that US-EU timetable differences will undermine common global capital standard. Many issues still outstanding By Melvyn Westlake

Regulators in Japan have strongly denied speculation among some bankers that Japan might delay by a year its plans for implementing the Basel II safety rules.

Jaime Caruana looks certain to step down as chairman of the Basel Committee next July, after a little over three years in the job. Hot favourite to replace him is the current vice chairman Nick Le Pan, Canada’s Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

EU officials insist supervisory cooperation must be given a chance to work. Bankers want a more radical approach By Melvyn Westlake

One proposal for monitoring the actions of national bank supervisors and limiting their scope to take discretionary decisions would involve the creation of a European Banking Oversight Board, perhaps located at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. This idea has been advanced by a group of 15 academics from 12 European countries and the US that form the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (ESFRC).

The Basel II risk-based capital ratio will provide the ultimate guarantee of the safety and soundness of major US banking groups, not the present domestic leverage ratio, in the view of Federal Reserve governor Susan Schmidt Bies. Her comments to GRR, in the margins of a December conference in Geneva, underline the continuing sharp differences between the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) over the impact that the Basel II capital standard will have if adopted in the US.