Email News Service October 08: US core banks starting Basel II tests by April deadline

BUDAPEST, October 16 (Global Risk Regulator) – America’s biggest banks, the co-called core banks, plan to start their delayed year-long tests of the controversial Basel II bank safety rules by the April 1, 2009 deadline set by regulators, a top federal supervisor told Global Risk Regulator today.This means that after a series of delays the institutions representing the bulk of US banking assets will have begun by April 1, 2010, provided the tests are deemed successful, the three-year transition to the complex, risk-focused Basel II capital adequacy rules. The core banks, estimated at between six and a dozen, are required by US supervisors to implement Basel II. In doing so they must use only the most advanced approaches to measuring their risks and determining the minimum capital they need to absorb shock losses.