The Group of Thirty released their latest report: Financial Reform – A Framework for Financial Stability.(.pdf)
The report focuses on flaws in the global financial system and provides recommendations to improve the systems. The report project was led by Paul Volcker, Chairman, and Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa and Arminio Fraga Neto, Vice Chairmen. The rrport does not focus on the current actions and capital injections. It looks to the policies and regulations that control the financial markets.
I focused on Recommendation number 4 on the oversight of private pools of capital:
Recommendation 4:
a. Managers of private pools of capital that employ substantial borrowed funds should be required to register with an appropriate national prudential regulator. There should be some minimum size and venture capital exemptions from such registration requirement.
b. The prudential regulator of such managers should have authority to require periodic regulatory reports and public disclosures of appropriate information regarding the size, investment style, borrowing, and performance of the funds under management. Since introduction of even a modest system of registration and regulation can create a false impression of lower investment risk, disclosure, and suitability standards will have to be reevaluated.
c. For funds above a size judged to be potentially systemically significant, the prudential regulator should have authority to establish appropriate standards for capital, liquidity, and risk management.
d. For these purposes, the jurisdiction of the appropriate prudential regulator should be based on the primary business location of the manager of such funds, regardless of the legal domicile of the funds themselves. Given the global nature of the markets in which such managers and funds operate, it is imperative that a regulatory framework be applied on an internationally consistent basis.
