BRUSSELS, March 2 (Global Risk Regulator) – European leaders meeting at an emergency summit at the weekend backed a blueprint for streamlining how banks are supervised in order to spot excessive risk-taking earlier, according to Reuters news agency reporting from Brussels.

WASHINGTON, February 26 (Global Risk Regulator) – US president Barack Obama called yesterday for a sweeping overhaul of America’s financial regulation, joining European leaders in a push for tighter regulation as the key London summit on the global financial crisis approaches.

LONDON, February 26 (Global Risk Regulator) - Representatives of the credit derivatives industry are claiming the deal that nine major dealer firms agreed with the European Commission last week is a compromise “giving everybody a bit of what they want.” However, it looks more like a victory for internal markets commissioner Charlie McCreevy. The nine firms have pledged to clear eligible European credit default swap (CDS) contracts through a European central counterparty (CCP) by the end of July.

Adoption of counter-cyclical regulation is urged in an influential report. It has ignited the policy debate over reform of the regulatory system By Melvyn Westlake

Radical overhaul of Britain’s liquidity risk policy is partly a response to the Lehman bankruptcy. Is it also a retreat from internationalism?

A Bill to ban ‘naked’ credit swaps circulates in Congress as EU lawmakers try to impose a European solution on the market By Roger Aitken

This article is an edited version of a paper in the latest issue of OECD Financial Market Trends.

Counter-cyclical capital rules are all the rage. As always, there’s an accounting dimension that is complicating the issue Accounting rule-makers, anxious to defend the interests of investors amid the increasingly noisy clamour for banking reform, are considering classifying so-called dynamic provisioning in a way that strictly limits the room for balance sheet trickery.

BRUSSELS – EU internal markets commissioner Charlie McCreevy lashed out in mid-February against banking industry associations and their lobbyists who have lined up to table “wrecking amendments” to the revised Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) now under scrutiny in the European Parliament. This piece of flagship legislation will revise the 2006 CRD that implemented the Basel II capital adequacy standard for banks within the EU. The global financial crisis has significantly boosted its importance as several key reforms have been incorporated aimed at curbing the kind of reckless bank lending that led to boom and bust.

BRUSSELS – Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a member of the executive board of the European Central Bank (ECB), has made the most overt claim yet for his institution to be given a stronger role in European bank supervision. The ECB was frustrated at not being given the job of supervising banks when it was first set up in Frankfurt in 1998. Jean-Claude Trichet, the bank president, and fellow board members have continued to quietly press the case behind the scenes.