Regulators launch twin initiatives to reduce the risk of systemically important firms failing, and resolve those that do become insolvent By Melvyn Westlake

In key areas, Europe’s version of Basel III diverges from agreed rules. Lawmakers, officials face a long, hot autumn wrangling over new law

Rules implementing Collins Amendment pass unaltered; and a vindicated Bair departs urging an end to capital models reliance By Melvyn Westlake

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

Europe vents frustration at US ambivalence on IFRS, but China, Japan and India may be thankful for a delay By David Keefe

LONDON – Analysts and academics are continuing to mine the mother lode of detail about the risk exposures of the 90 EU banks subjected to the latest, critical round of stress testing. The results of this health check, released in mid-July by the European Banking Authority (EBA), the London-based supervision watchdog, included some 3,200 data points per bank, compared with just 149 in last year’s stress test.

LONDON – The global financial services industry would welcome more intensive and challenging supervision, and is ready to pay for it. That is the central and rather surprising message of the latest report from the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the Washington trade body that represents some 430 financial firms around the world.

BASEL – Global insurance regulators have reached the first milestone in their programme for improving the supervision of big insurance groups with the release of a concept paper on their crucial ComFrame project for supervising internationally active groups.

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are intensely disliked by many EU financial officials, a situation compounded by, among other things, the downgrading of Portugal’s sovereign debt to junk status by Moody’s in early July. CRAs have already been subject to two rounds of regulation in Europe since the financial crisis, and the European Commissioner for internal markets, Michel Barnier is planning a third, focusing in particular on the methodology used to rate sovereign bonds.

SINGAPORE - Plans to make banks in Singapore hold higher capital levels than those set out under the new Basel III regulations, are among some of the toughest new banking rules unveiled so far across the globe.