Basel II, the new risk-based capital framework based on an international accord, is being adopted by individual countries. It includes standardized and advanced approaches to estimating capital requirements. In the U.S., bank regulators have finalized an advanced approach rule that will be required for some of the largest, most internationally active banks and proposed an optional standardized approach rule for non-core banks that will also have the option to remain on existing capital rules. This report examines: (1) the markets in which banks compete; (2) how new capital rules address U.S. banks' competitive concerns; and (3) actions regulators are taking to address competitive and other potential negative effects during implementation. Illus.

"Following a period of protracted turbulence, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic face the challenge of re-evaluating prudential standards in the midst of implementing the new so-called 'Basel II' rules, issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Indeed, the 2007 subprime lending crisis and other scandals have cast doubt on the credibility of banks' internal governance and risk assessment and management systems and the role of credit rating agencies in externally assessing the risk of complex structured products. Equally, the capacity of regulators to monitor the risky, multifaceted activities of large cross-border institutions has been subjected to immense stress." "In addressing these issues, this CEPS Task Force report supports a regulatory paradigm shift, which resets the incentives to establish an integrated risk-assessment, -management and -governance culture at an institution-wide level. Towards this end, it stresses the need to strengthen the roles of pillars 2 and 3 (supervisory review and market discipline) and to avoid relying solely on the outcome of easily manipulated, excessively sophisticated internal models to determine capital requirements and a supervisory 'box-ticking' approach. The report also examines the potential consequences of the new rules on the basis of early quantitative impact studies and warns of undesirable impacts under adverse market conditions. Finally, it examines the progress achieved in implementing Basel II in Europe and in the US and raises questions about global regulatory consistency and convergence."--BOOK JACKET.

This analysis of how multi-level networked governance has superseded the liberal system of interdependent states focuses on the role of law in mediating power and shows how lawyers have shaped the main features of capitalism, especially the transnational corporation. It covers the main institutions regulating the world economy, including the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and a myriad of other bodies, and introduces the reader to key regulatory arenas: corporate governance, competition policy, investment protection, anti-corruption rules, corporate codes and corporate liability, international taxation, avoidance and evasion and the campaign to combat them, the offshore finance system, international financial regulation and its contribution to the financial crisis, trade rules and their interaction with standards especially for food safety and environmental protection, the regulation of key services (telecommunications and finance), intellectual property and the tensions between exclusive private rights and emergent forms of common and collective property in knowledge.

The SEC first incorporated reliance on credit ratings into its rules and regulations in 1975 in connection with how broker-dealers must compute their net capital. In that rule, the SEC specified that a broker-dealer, in computing its net capital, could take a lesser deduction from its net worth as to securities that were rated as having a comparatively low chance of default according to a credit rating of a ¿nationally recognized statistical rating org.¿ (¿NRSRO¿). This report focuses on the implementation of and compliance with the Rating Agency Act and SEC rules. It also assessed the SEC¿s efforts to oversee the NRSROs and to implement the Rating Agency Act¿s accountability, competition, and transparency objectives.

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act directed a study of the role of leverage in the current financial crisis and federal oversight of leverage. The objectives were to review: (1) how leveraging and deleveraging by financial institutions may have contributed to the crisis; (2) regulations adopted by federal financial regulators to limit leverage and how regulators oversee compliance with the regulations; and (3) any limitations the current crisis has revealed in regulatory approaches used to restrict leverage and regulatory proposals to address them. To meet these objectives, the auditor reviewed relevant laws and regulations and academic and other studies, and interviewed regulators and market participants. Includes recommend. Illus.