G-7 Focus on Bank-Rule Overhaul to Reduce Stability Risks

Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers said they are moving toward revamping banking rules and ensuring that any lender on the brink of failure can be shut down without threatening financial stability.

An “extensive discussion on banking regulation” included talks about how to close banks, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi told reporters yesterday after a G-7 meeting in Aylesbury, near London. The officials had a “clear sense that the different legislations should converge as much as we can on this point,” he said.

European Union leaders began work on a banking union last year to break the cycle of contagion between nations and their lenders that has plagued the euro area in the past three years. A European bank resolution plan is due to be proposed in June.

“It is important to complete swiftly our work to ensure that no banks are too big to fail,” U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said after leading the meeting. “We must put regimes in place in each of our jurisdictions to deal with failing banks and to protect taxpayers, and to do so in a globally consistent manner.”

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