Banks holding out against regulation

It’s a “winners-of-the-crisis get-together”, leads Die Presse today, as the Institute of International Finance (IIF) opens its Spring Membership Meeting in Vienna. The object of the meeting called by the Deutsche Bank’s CEO, and where European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet and US investor George Soros are expected to appear, is to organise the fight against any and all banking sector regulation. However, all the reform measures announced since the outbreak of the crisis have since gone by the board anyway, bemoans the Viennese daily: viz. the "regulation of all stock markets, products and players” announced by the G20, the plans for a European financial authority, a Tobin tax (on currency conversion to tame cross-border market volatility) or a bank tax. The paper stresses that German and French banks are the big winners of the Greek bailout. "Lobbying works wonders,” observes Die Presse, which foresees rough waters ahead for the Basel III proposals requiring banks to hold more equity and liquidity so as to keep these financial leviathans from going belly-up. European banks would need an estimated €300 billion in additional capital to make the grade, reports Die Presse.