New bank capital rules won’t stop crises, says top financial trade body

Forcing banks to hold more capital will not prevent future financial crises, according to leading financial sector trade body the Association for Financial Markets in Europe. Launching its report on the financial crisis, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), said that better regulation was the key to preventing a repeat and not harsher capital requirements. The AFME membership includes many of the world’s largest financial institutions, such as Barclays and HSBC, and its report comes less than two weeks after a meeting of the world’s top central bankers and regulators agreed on a new set of capital rules for banks at a meeting in the Swiss city of Basel. The report rebuts many of the main concepts of the incoming Basel III rules, suggesting that attempts to target regulation against “systemically important” financial institutions will fail.