G20 plans beef up of regulatory task force

(Reuters):  World leaders are likely to give their Financial Stability Board more clout next month to implement a welter of new financial rules as cracks and slippages emerge in the face of strong lobbying by banks. The task force, made up of regulators, treasury officials and central bankers from the world's top 20 economies (G20), has increased its staff to 20 in the past year but is still tiny compared with national watchdogs and given the work it faces. "It is time to make the necessary changes to the governance of the Financial Stability Board so as to underpin its monitoring function," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said in a letter to other EU leaders on Monday.

Two G20 sources said the plan is to give the FSB a stronger "institutional underpinning" with its own resources.

The aim is for the board to become more akin to the so-called Bretton Woods institutions — the International Monetary Fund and World Bank — who wield considerable clout, but it is not expected to have an international treaty as its basis.
Currently the FSB depends on the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, where the board is based.

"The FSB has no resources of its own and that question is of course related to the issue of its capacity to monitor implementation of rules," a G20 sourcesaid.

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