EU ministers tell banks to move quickly on bad debt disclosure
Ministers of largest European economies believe that a quicker disclosure of bad debt will help restore confidence in falling markets
Finance heads of Europe’s largest economies have urged banks to step up
efforts to disclose their sub-prime losses so as to restore investor confidence
in the markets.
At a Paris meeting yesterday, minsters from France, Germany, Italy and the UK
agreed to increase the pace of improving transparency, co-ordinating national
regulators, reviewing the role of credit rating agencies and strengthening
management of liquidity risks.
French minister Christine Lagarde called on banks to ‘accelerate’ their
efforts to identify and write down bad debts to ‘clearly improve the level of
confidence in the markets’.
‘We are united in our determination to make progress and to make progress
quickly,’ said UK chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling.
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