G20 leaders praise additional oversight requirements for world's biggest banks, insurers
STRELNA. Sept 6 (Interfax) - The leaders of the G20 countries, at their first meeting at the summit in St. Petersburg, praised the introduction of additional requirements for oversight of the world's 28 largest banks and nine largest insurance companies, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters.
"Steps in the area of regulation of too-big-to-fail financial institutions were praised. We agreed that there are 28 such banks and nine insurance companies," Siluanov said.
He said that they will be subject to "additional requirements for oversight, for obligations of shareholders, so that responsibility for the fate of these organizations is borne by shareholders, and additional requirements for prudential oversight."
It was also said at the meeting that there is a need for additional assessments of rating agencies that work on rating given countries, and the objectivity of such ratings, the minister said.
He said the leaders also discussed regulation of shadow banking and nonbank financial organizations.
"A lot was said about shadow banking, because this sector needs to be regulated. Operations that are carried out by banks come under prudential oversight, operations of the shadow banking sector are not subject to regulation, which leads to questionable transactions, tax evasion. This sector needs to be cleaned up. Germany's initiative was supported," Siluanov said. The development of measures to regulate shadow banking was led by the working group of Germany and Indonesia.
"We have a common understanding that it is necessary to impose order and implement measures of regulation in this area," Siluanov said.
The leaders also discussed preventing protectionism in free trade. "Our leaders devoted attention to this because a free trade regime makes it possible to simulate exporters, to take greater advantage of this regime to revive their economies," Siluanov said.
He said that the leaders of China and the United States devoted particular attention to this topic.