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G-20 Leaders' Statement Issued At Conclusion Of Pittsburgh Summit
Sept. 25, 2009
FEI Summary
At the conclusion of the G-20 Summit on September 25, the G-20 issued a communique entitled, Leaders' Statement: The Pittsburgh Summit. Following are some topics addressed in the communique.
Accounting Standards
Among the points noted in the communique, in the discussion of review of progress and additional steps, paragraph 14 states:
"We call on our international accounting bodies to redouble their efforts to achieve a single set of high quality, global accounting standards within the context of their independent standard setting process, and complete their convergence project by June 2011. The International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) institutional framework should further enhance the involvement of various stakeholders."
Framework for Stong, Sustainable, Balanced Growth
The communique states:
"Today we are launching a Framework for Strong, Sustainable, and Balanced Growth. To put in place this framework, we commit to develop a process whereby we set out our objectives, put forward policies to achieve these objectives, and together assess our progress. We will ask the IMF to help us with its analysis of how our respective national or regional policy frameworks fit together. We will ask the World Bank to advise us on progress in promoting development and poverty reduction as part of the rebalancing of global growth. We will work together to ensure that our fiscal, monetary, trade, and structural policies are collectively consistent with more sustainable and balanced trajectories of growth. We will undertake macro prudential and regulatory policies to help prevent credit and asset price cycles from becoming forces of destabilization. As we commit to implement a new, sustainable growth model, we should encourage work on measurement methods so as to better take into account the social and environmental dimensions of economic development. ... We call on our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to launch the new Framework by November by initiating a cooperative process of mutual assessment of our policy frameworks and the implications of those frameworks for the pattern and sustainability of global growth. We believe that regular consultations, strengthened cooperation on macroeconomic policies, the exchange of experiences on structural policies, and ongoing assessment will promote the adoption of sound policies and secure a healthy global economy.
Consumer, Depositor, and Investor Protection
The communique states: "Far more needs to be done to protect consumers, depositors, and investors against abusive market practices, promote high quality standards, and help ensure the world does not face a crisis of the scope we have seen. We are committed to take action at the national and international level to raise standards together so that our national authorities implement global standards consistently in a way that ensures a level playing field and avoids fragmentation of markets, protectionism, and regulatory arbitrage. Our efforts to deal with impaired assets and to encourage the raising of additional capital must continue, where needed. We commit to conduct robust, transparent stress tests as needed." Further highlights include:
- We call on banks to retain a greater proportion of current profits to build capital, where needed, to support lending.
- Securitization sponsors or originators should retain a part of the risk of the underlying assets, thus encouraging them to act prudently.
- It is important to ensure an adequate balance between macroprudential and microprudential regulation to control risks, and to develop the tools necessary to monitor and assess the buildup of macroprudential risks in the financial system.
- In addition, we have agreed to improve the regulation, functioning, and transparency of financial and commodity markets to address excessive commodity price volatility.
Additionally, the communique states: "Building on their Declaration on Further Steps to Strengthen the International Financial System, we call on our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to reach agreement on an international framework of reform in the following critical areas:
- Building high quality capital and mitigating pro-cyclicality: We commit to developing by end-2010 internationally agreed rules to improve both the quantity and quality of bank capital and to discourage excessive leverage. These rules will be phased in as financial conditions improve and economic recovery is assured, with the aim of implementation by end-2012. The national implementation of higher level and better quality capital requirements, counter-cyclical capital buffers, higher capital requirements for risky products and off-balance sheet activities, as elements of the Basel II Capital Framework, together with strengthened liquidity risk requirements and forward-looking provisioning, will reduce incentives for banks to take excessive risks and create a financial system better prepared to withstand adverse shocks. We welcome the key measures recently agreed by the oversight body of the Basel Committee to strengthen the supervision and regulation of the banking sector. We support the introduction of a leverage ratio as a supplementary measure to the Basel II risk-based framework with a view to migrating to a Pillar 1 treatment based on appropriate review and calibration. To ensure comparability, the details of the leverage ratio will be harmonized internationally, fully adjusting for differences in accounting. All major G-20 financial centers commit to have adopted the Basel II Capital Framework by 2011.
- Reforming compensation practices to support financial stability: Excessive compensation in the financial sector has both reflected and encouraged excessive risk taking. Reforming compensation policies and practices is an essential part of our effort to increase financial stability. We fully endorse the implementation standards of the FSB aimed at aligning compensation with long-term value creation, not excessive risk-taking, including by (i) avoiding multi-year guaranteed bonuses; (ii) requiring a significant portion of variable compensation to be deferred, tied to performance and subject to appropriate clawback and to be vested in the form of stock or stock-like instruments, as long as these create incentives aligned with long-term value creation and the time horizon of risk; (iii) ensuring that compensation for senior executives and other employees having a material impact on the firm’s risk exposure align with performance and risk; (iv) making firms’ compensation policies and structures transparent through disclosure requirements; (v) limiting variable compensation as a percentage of total net revenues when it is inconsistent with the maintenance of a sound capital base; and (vi) ensuring that compensation committees overseeing compensation policies are able to act independently. Supervisors should have the responsibility to review firms’ compensation policies and structures with institutional and systemic risk in mind and, if necessary to offset additional risks, apply corrective measures, such as higher capital requirements, to those firms that fail to implement sound compensation policies and practices. Supervisors should have the ability to modify compensation structures in the case of firms that fail or require extraordinary public intervention. We call on firms to implement these sound compensation practices immediately. We task the FSB to monitor the implementation of FSB standards and propose additional measures as required by March 2010.
- Improving over-the-counter derivatives markets: All standardized OTC derivative contracts should be traded on exchanges or electronic trading platforms, where appropriate, and cleared through central counterparties by end-2012 at the latest. OTC derivative contracts should be reported to trade repositories. Non-centrally cleared contracts should be subject to higher capital requirements. We ask the FSB and its relevant members to assess regularly implementation and whether it is sufficient to improve transparency in the derivatives markets, mitigate systemic risk, and protect against market abuse.
- Addressing cross-border resolutions and systemically important financial institutions by end-2010: Systemically important financial firms should develop internationally-consistent firm-specific contingency and resolution plans. Our authorities should establish crisis management groups for the major cross-border firms and a legal framework for crisis intervention as well as improve information sharing in times of stress. We should develop resolution tools and frameworks for the effective resolution of financial groups to help mitigate the disruption of financial institution failures and reduce moral hazard in the future. Our prudential standards for systemically important institutions should be commensurate with the costs of their failure. The FSB should propose by the end of October 2010 possible measures including more intensive supervision and specific additional capital, liquidity, and other prudential requirements.
Prepared Sept. 25, 2009 by Edith Orenstein, director, Accounting Policy Analysis and Communications, Financial Executives International. This summary does not represent FEI opinion unless specifically noted above.
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