Basel II is dead in the United States.
The banking standard that would effectively cut core capital requirements for banks based on various risk gauges is looking increasingly like it will never be adopted in America by banking regulators.
“I don’t anticipate we will be going to Basel II in the near term,” said Ron Logue, the chairman and CEO of State Street Corp.
Basel I requires about 100 to 150 basis points more of capital. The TARP capital infusions by the Treasury have largely pushed Tier 1 capital ratios over 10% at most banks from the 8% range. The thought of cutting Tier 1 capital to the 6.5% to 7% range seems altogether far-fetched considering what’s taken place in the global financial markets over the last year or so.
While cutting the core capital requirements is clearly not a driving factor any longer, is there any probablity that we will see a re-authoring of this regulation to reflect the valuable pillars such as entity exposure and risk monitoring of the portfolio regardless of the baseliine for the capital reservations?