Capital Briefs: Global Banks Ponder How to Head Off Crisis

The Institute of International Finance on Tuesday launched an initiative to prevent financial crises, such as the one that hit Asia last year.

The group, composed of 285 global financial institutions, has created working groups on financial crises, transparency, capital flow, and loan quality. The institute will release the preliminary findings of the working groups in September.

"The Asian crisis has underscored the importance for all parties to consider ways to improve the functioning of the system," Fuji Bank chairman Toru Hashimoto said in a prepared statement. "We look forward to drawing lessons from this experience and to applying these lessons to better practices by private financial institutions, by governments, and by multilateral institutions."

The financial crisis working group will examine financial sector reform and risk management, while the transparency group will explore how to improve the flow of financial data from companies and governments. The capital flow group's agenda includes analyzing the economic impact of short-term controls on the movement of capital, while the loan quality group will seek to develop standards for when banks should classify bad credits.

"We look forward to an exchange of views with the official sector as it also considers how to strengthen the international financial system," William R. Rhodes, vice chairman of Citibank, said in a prepared statement.