DECLARATION ON STRENGTHENING THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM –

LONDON SUMMIT, 2 APRIL 2009

We, the Leaders of the G20, have taken, and will continue to take, action to
strengthen regulation and supervision in line with the commitments we made in
Washington to reform the regulation of the financial sector. Our principles are
strengthening transparency and accountability, enhancing sound regulation,
promoting integrity in financial markets and reinforcing international cooperation.
The material in this declaration expands and provides further detail on the
commitments in our statement. We published today a full progress report against each
of the 47 actions set out in the Washington Action Plan. In particular, we have agreed
the following major reforms.

Financial Stability Board

We have agreed that the Financial Stability Forum should be expanded, given a
broadened mandate to promote financial stability, and re-established with a stronger
institutional basis and enhanced capacity as the Financial Stability Board (FSB).
The FSB will:
 assess vulnerabilities affecting the financial system, identify and oversee action
needed to address them;
 promote co-ordination and information exchange among authorities responsible
for financial stability;
 monitor and advise on market developments and their implications for regulatory
policy;
 advise on and monitor best practice in meeting regulatory standards;
 undertake joint strategic reviews of the policy development work of the
international Standard Setting Bodies to ensure their work is timely, coordinated,
focused on priorities, and addressing gaps;
 set guidelines for, and support the establishment, functioning of, and participation
in, supervisory colleges, including through ongoing identification of the most
systemically important cross-border firms;
 support contingency planning for cross-border crisis management, particularly
with respect to systemically important firms; and
 collaborate with the IMF to conduct Early Warning Exercises to identify and
report to the IMFC and the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors
on the build up of macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to
address them.
Members of the FSB commit to pursue the maintenance of financial stability, enhance
the openness and transparency of the financial sector, and implement international
financial standards (including the 12 key International Standards and Codes), and
agree to undergo periodic peer reviews, using among other evidence IMF / World
Bank public Financial Sector Assessment Program reports. The FSB will elaborate
and report on these commitments and the evaluation process.

1
We welcome the FSB’s and IMF’s commitment to intensify their collaboration, each
complementing the other’s role and mandate.

International cooperation

To strengthen international cooperation we have agreed:

 to establish the remaining supervisory colleges for significant cross-border firms
by June 2009, building on the 28 already in place;
 to implement the FSF principles for cross-border crisis management immediately,
and that home authorities of each major international financial institution should
ensure that the group of authorities with a common interest in that financial
institution meet at least annually;
 to support continued efforts by the IMF, FSB, World Bank, and BCBS to develop
an international framework for cross-border bank resolution arrangements;
 the importance of further work and international cooperation on the subject of exit
strategies;
 that the IMF and FSB should together launch an Early Warning Exercise at the
2009 Spring Meetings.

Prudential regulation

We have agreed to strengthen international frameworks for prudential regulation:

 until recovery is assured the international standard for the minimum level of
capital should remained unchanged;
 where appropriate, capital buffers above the required minima should be allowed to
decline to facilitate lending in deteriorating economic conditions;
 once recovery is assured, prudential regulatory standards should be strengthened.
Buffers above regulatory minima should be increased and the quality of capital
should be enhanced. Guidelines for harmonisation of the definition of capital
should be produced by end 2009. The BCBS should review minimum levels of
capital and develop recommendations in 2010;
 the FSB, BCBS, and CGFS, working with accounting standard setters, should take
forward, with a deadline of end 2009, implementation of the recommendations
published today to mitigate procyclicality, including a requirement for banks to
build buffers of resources in good times that they can draw down when conditions
deteriorate;
 risk-based capital requirements should be supplemented with a simple,
transparent, non-risk based measure which is internationally comparable, properly
takes into account off-balance sheet exposures, and can help contain the build-up
of leverage in the banking system;
 the BCBS and authorities should take forward work on improving incentives for
risk management of securitisation, including considering due diligence and
quantitative retention requirements, by 2010;
 all G20 countries should progressively adopt the Basel II capital framework; and

2
 the BCBS and national authorities should develop and agree by 2010 a global
framework for promoting stronger liquidity buffers at financial institutions,
including cross-border institutions.

The scope of regulation

We have agreed that all systemically important financial institutions, markets, and
instruments should be subject to an appropriate degree of regulation and oversight. In
particular:
 we will amend our regulatory systems to ensure authorities are able to identify and
take account of macro-prudential risks across the financial system including in the
case of regulated banks, shadow banks, and private pools of capital to limit the
build up of systemic risk. We call on the FSB to work with the BIS and
international standard setters to develop macro-prudential tools and provide a
report by autumn 2009;
 large and complex financial institutions require particularly careful oversight
given their systemic importance;
 we will ensure that our national regulators possess the powers for gathering
relevant information on all material financial institutions, markets, and
instruments in order to assess the potential for their failure or severe stress to
contribute to systemic risk. This will be done in close coordination at international
level in order to achieve as much consistency as possible across jurisdictions;
 in order to prevent regulatory arbitrage, the IMF and the FSB will produce
guidelines for national authorities to assess whether a financial institution, market,
or an instrument is systemically important by the next meeting of our Finance
Ministers and Central Bank Governors. These guidelines should focus on what
institutions do rather than their legal form;
 hedge funds or their managers will be registered and will be required to disclose
appropriate information on an ongoing basis to supervisors or regulators,
including on their leverage, necessary for assessment of the systemic risks that
they pose individually or collectively. Where appropriate, registration should be
subject to a minimum size. They will be subject to oversight to ensure that they
have adequate risk management. We ask the FSB to develop mechanisms for
cooperation and information sharing between relevant authorities in order to
ensure that effective oversight is maintained where a fund is located in a different
jurisdiction from the manager. We will, cooperating through the FSB, develop
measures that implement these principles by the end of 2009. We call on the FSB
to report to the next meeting of our Finance Ministers and Central Bank
Governors;
 supervisors should require that institutions which have hedge funds as their
counterparties have effective risk management. This should include mechanisms
to monitor the funds’ leverage and set limits for single counterparty exposures;
 we will promote the standardisation and resilience of credit derivatives markets, in
particular through the establishment of central clearing counterparties subject to
effective regulation and supervision. We call on the industry to develop an action
plan on standardisation by autumn 2009; and

3
 we will each review and adapt the boundaries of the regulatory framework
regularly to keep pace with developments in the financial system and promote
good practices and consistent approaches at the international level.

Compensation

We have endorsed the principles on pay and compensation in significant financial

institutions developed by the FSF to ensure compensation structures are consistent
with firms’ long-term goals and prudent risk taking. We have agreed that our national
supervisors should ensure significant progress in the implementation of these
principles by the 2009 remuneration round. The BCBS should integrate these
principles into their risk management guidance by autumn 2009. The principles,
which have today been published, require:
 firms' boards of directors to play an active role in the design, operation, and
evaluation of compensation schemes;
 compensation arrangements, including bonuses, to properly reflect risk and the
timing and composition of payments to be sensitive to the time horizon of risks.
Payments should not be finalised over short periods where risks are realised over
long periods; and
 firms to publicly disclose clear, comprehensive, and timely information about
compensation. Stakeholders, including shareholders, should be adequately
informed on a timely basis on compensation policies to exercise effective
monitoring.

Supervisors will assess firms’ compensation policies as part of their overall

assessment of their soundness. Where necessary they will intervene with responses
that can include increased capital requirements.

Tax havens and non-cooperative jurisdictions

It is essential to protect public finances and international standards against the risks
posed by non-cooperative jurisdictions. We call on all jurisdictions to adhere to the
international standards in the prudential, tax, and AML/CFT areas. To this end, we
call on the appropriate bodies to conduct and strengthen objective peer reviews, based
on existing processes, including through the FSAP process.

We call on countries to adopt the international standard for information exchange

endorsed by the G20 in 2004 and reflected in the UN Model Tax Convention. We
note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global
Forum against the international standard for exchange of information. We welcome
the new commitments made by a number of jurisdictions and encourage them to
proceed swiftly with implementation.

We stand ready to take agreed action against those jurisdictions which do not meet
international standards in relation to tax transparency. To this end we have agreed to
develop a toolbox of effective counter measures for countries to consider, such as:

4
 increased disclosure requirements on the part of taxpayers and financial
institutions to report transactions involving non-cooperative jurisdictions;
 withholding taxes in respect of a wide variety of payments;
 denying deductions in respect of expense payments to payees resident in a non-
cooperative jurisdiction;
 reviewing tax treaty policy;
 asking international institutions and regional development banks to review their
investment policies; and,
 giving extra weight to the principles of tax transparency and information
exchange when designing bilateral aid programs.

We also agreed that consideration should be given to further options relating to

financial relations with these jurisdictions

We are committed to developing proposals, by end 2009, to make it easier for

developing countries to secure the benefits of a new cooperative tax environment.

We are also committed to strengthened adherence to international prudential

regulatory and supervisory standards. The IMF and the FSB in cooperation with
international standard-setters will provide an assessment of implementation by
relevant jurisdictions, building on existing FSAPs where they exist. We call on the
FSB to develop a toolbox of measures to promote adherence to prudential standards
and cooperation with jurisdictions.

We agreed that the FATF should revise and reinvigorate the review process for
assessing compliance by jurisdictions with AML/CFT standards, using agreed
evaluation reports where available.

We call upon the FSB and the FATF to report to the next G20 Finance Ministers and
Central Bank Governors’ meeting on adoption and implementation by countries.

Accounting standards

We have agreed that the accounting standard setters should improve standards for the
valuation of financial instruments based on their liquidity and investors’ holding
horizons, while reaffirming the framework of fair value accounting.

We also welcome the FSF recommendations on procyclicality that address accounting

issues. We have agreed that accounting standard setters should take action by the end
of 2009 to:
 reduce the complexity of accounting standards for financial instruments;
 strengthen accounting recognition of loan-loss provisions by incorporating a
broader range of credit information;
 improve accounting standards for provisioning, off-balance sheet exposures and
valuation uncertainty;

5
 achieve clarity and consistency in the application of valuation standards
internationally, working with supervisors;
 make significant progress towards a single set of high quality global accounting
standards; and,
 within the framework of the independent accounting standard setting process,
improve involvement of stakeholders, including prudential regulators and
emerging markets, through the IASB’s constitutional review.

Credit Rating Agencies

We have agreed on more effective oversight of the activities of Credit Rating

Agencies, as they are essential market participants. In particular, we have agreed that:
 all Credit Rating Agencies whose ratings are used for regulatory purposes should
be subject to a regulatory oversight regime that includes registration. The
regulatory oversight regime should be established by end 2009 and should be
consistent with the IOSCO Code of Conduct Fundamentals. IOSCO should
coordinate full compliance;
 national authorities will enforce compliance and require changes to a rating
agency’s practices and procedures for managing conflicts of interest and assuring
the transparency and quality of the rating process. In particular, Credit Rating
Agencies should differentiate ratings for structured products and provide full
disclosure of their ratings track record and the information and assumptions that
underpin the ratings process. The oversight framework should be consistent across
jurisdictions with appropriate sharing of information between national authorities,
including through IOSCO; and,
 the Basel Committee should take forward its review on the role of external ratings
in prudential regulation and determine whether there are any adverse incentives
that need to be addressed.

Next Steps

We instruct our Finance Ministers to complete the implementation of these decisions

and the attached action plan. We have asked the FSB and the IMF to monitor
progress, working with the FATF and the Global Forum, and to provide a report to the
next meeting of our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.