It has been a long and exhausting labour of love. Between
200 and 300 bank regulators from the wealthy G10 countries have
flown many thousands of miles and held countless hours of meetings.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which meets under the
auspices of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), has spent
the best part of two years rewriting the rules on bank capital.
The committee, chaired by New York Federal Reserve president Bill
McDonough, steered the discussions. But the bulk of the work was
done by four major sub-committees. Each sub-committee set up
working groups to look into some detail of the proposed rules. The
biggest sub-committee, the capital task force, spawned no less than
half a dozen sub-committees of its own.
The proposal document, released on January 16, is suitably massive.
Its 541 pages outline a new world order for bank capital which
looks, at first glance, like a...
