LONDON – Current financial market turmoil highlights the need for the Group of Seven major industrialised economies to lead much-needed reform of the way financial regulation is conducted at the global level, two former UK regulators argue in a new book*.

BASEL – The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) – the international agency often dubbed the central banker’s central bank – has set up a consultative council to strengthen communication between central bankers in the Americas.

LONDON – The cost of regulation and compliance for the world’s leading 100 financial institutions has risen more than 30% in the past three years, to reach $56 billion in 2007. And, it is still rising. By 2010, the governance and control bill for this group of institutions could hit $100 billion, even before any new regulation introduced in response to the current global financial crisis, reckons Deloitte & Touche, the professional services firm.

TORONTO, Canada – Tracking the value of complex structured credit products, even if imperfect, provides much needed transparency and enables markets to adjust in a necessary if painful manner, according to the world’s top international accounting rule-maker.

LONDON – There is a clear need for action both by banks and the public authorities to strengthen the financial system’s defences against the kind of liquidity shock experienced during the 2007-08 crisis, a senior regulator has told a liquidity risk management conference. Nigel Jenkinson, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, identified four lessons from the crisis that he said should help prevent future problems.

PARIS – Fundamental reform of the financial system and its regulation is needed to address the issues highlighted by the current financial markets crisis, according to the Financial Markets Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Priority should be given to private sector initiatives to speed up the recovery of financial markets but government intervention may be needed, said the committee in a statement following a two-day meeting in mid-April attended by central bankers and finance ministry officials.

BASEL – Scenario stress testing should incorporate the self-reinforcing behaviour shown up by the credit crisis, the world’s banking, insurance and securities market regulators said in a joint report* on risk concentration issued in late April.

BASEL – Continued vigilance by insurance sector regulators is needed given there’s still uncertainty about the extent and development of current financial market turmoil, international regulators said in late April. So far, however, the impact of the credit crisis on insurers seems to have been limited, according to the Basel-based International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), which groups the world’s national insurance regulators together with the aim of promoting global safety standards for the industry.

Fear of failure means there’s still no sign of US banks starting their Basel II parallel run. Implementation unlikely until 2010

As the credit crisis appears to ease, central bankers survey the wreckage and ponder moral hazard Reports David Keefe