EU’s Basel III compliance comes under scrutiny Basel Committee is dispatching expert teams to assess compliance with capital rules. It’s a move that changes the nature of the institution By Melvyn Westlake

Proposals to overhaul banks’ trading book rules will lift capital requirements and reduce benefits of internal risk models

Lobbyists are pushing back against Fed measures to make the largest US banks safer. Others press for still tougher rules

A selection of news items generated by the American regulatory reform agenda

American critics fear divergences over the treatment of non-bank systemic firms could hold back economic recovery

BRUSSELS – Coming up with a package of measures to guard against a new crisis in the shadow banking sector is the “highest priority on the Financial Stability Board’s agenda this year,” Adair Turner, head of Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), told a conference in late April. The conference was organised as part of the EU executive’s process for developing its policy proposals to regulate shadow banking in Europe.

BASEL – Coordinating interest rate policy and bank capital rules could help deliver the twin, post-crisis goals of economic and financial stability, according to research by international economists.

LONDON – More than half (53%) of financial firms have decided not to enter an overseas jurisdiction, or have left one, as a direct result of the cost of extra-territorial regulation, where the rules of one country are imposed on firms based in another, according to a survey by risk and business consulting firm Protiviti.

NEW YORK – The 29 global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFI), which as a group represent $47 trillion in total assets, might need to raise roughly $566 billion in common equity in order to satisfy new Basel III capital rules, according to a report published in mid-May by Fitch, the ratings agency. This shortfall represents a 23% increase relative to these banks’ aggregate common equity of $2.5 trillion (figures based on December 2011 information).

BRUSSELS – The European Commission should scrap its plan to introduce “Organised Trading Facilities” (OTFs), a key part of its proposed overhaul of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), the cornerstone of the single financial market since it took effect across the EU in 2007.