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Basel Committee: New Rules Have Strong Impact On Banks-Report

By Maarten van Tartwijk

Published July 31, 2010

| Dow Jones Newswires

AMSTERDAM -(Dow Jones)- The Basel Committee's revised rules to make the global banking system safer and stronger may be less severe than previous proposals, but they will still have a significant impact on banks in coming years, Chairman Nout Wellink said Saturday in an interview with Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad.

Wellink said the revised rules of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which were presented Monday, will make banks more resilient although they may come at the expense of employees and shareholders.

"In coming years, banks won't be able to allocate a large chunk of their profits to bonuses and dividends as they need the money to strengthen their capital buffers," Wellink was quoted as saying. "I don't rule out that [some banks] will have to issue new shares to raise additional capital," he added.

Earlier this week, European bank shares rallied as investors cheered that the Basel Committee had watered down some of its proposals and that many won't come into effect until 2018.

A final agreement is expected by November.

Wellink, who is also president of the Dutch Central Bank, told NRC that the current proposals may be less stringent but that they are still substantial. "The most important is that we have established a stricter definition of core capital. This will have a big impact on the current [capital] rations," he said.

Wellink added that he expects banks will rapidly anticipate on the new regulations, even though they won't come into force in the next seven years.

"It will become part of the competition between banks: which bank will be the first to claim it fully complies with Basel III?," he said.

Wellink also told the newspaper that before the end of this year, the committee will also make up new rules on how banks should strengthen their capital positions in economic upturns and how they should convert contingent capital into core capital.

Copyright © 2010 Dow Jones Newswires

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