LONDON – The Financial Services Authority (FSA), Britain’s financial regulator, is steadily drawing hedge funds into the investment mainstream. It is widening retail access to these funds, with some increased consumer protection, and focusing on specific areas where it thinks the industry should tidy up its act. It is also proposing to allow hedge funds to list their shares in Britain.

LONDON – Preparing for the advanced approaches to measuring risk under the Basel II bank safety rules is a demanding task in terms of resources, data and time. Project teams, including the Australian supervisor’s, are stretched, Australia’s top prudential regulator said in April. “And I doubt that the challenges facing us in Australia are unique, if the discussions we and our banks are having with respective overseas counterparts are any guide,” Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (Apra) chairman John Laker said.

There is growing alarm among European bankers that the EU Commission is preparing the way for a new regulatory regime to deal with a broad range of possible concentration risks on banking and trading books. Such a move would go well beyond present requirements under either EU law, or existing rules in most of the bloc’s 25 member countries.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand – Bank exposure to losses on housing loans will be the key focus for New Zealand regulators assessing the accreditation of internal risk models under the Basel II capital rules, a top central banker said in April.

BASEL – Global banking regulators say they’ve kept changes to the minimum in updated versions of their core principles for banking supervision, which are regarded as the fundamental underpinning of bank regulation around the world.

LONDON – European banking regulators may extend by a month the mid-May deadline for responding to a questionnaire on banks’ large exposures, because of current regulatory pressures on banks, a UK supervisor said in April.

Everyone seems to want principles-based accounting rules but US House hearings showed it’s still a long way off.

Europe’s insurance regulators are trying to resolve divergent practices on a key issue that could derail the Solvency II project. France and Britain represent opposite approaches - David Keefe reports

Bankers and regulators are putting liquidity risk in the spotlight, but managing the risk is an infant science. Anita Bradshaw explains the problems and suggests some answers.

Further supervisory study of banks’ liquidity risks seen necessary. Banking association sets up own committee to examine key issues - By Melvyn Westlake