Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC's chief executive officer, Stephen Hester, said Tuesday that while he believes the path of regulatory change in the banking system will be "phased and sensible," the chances are slim that a global agreement will be reached.
"The speed of implementation and the totality of calibration [of the changes] have still got some extreme ends within it, and the ability to get a global agreement is probably very close to zero," Hester told investors at a presentation in New York.
"So I think it will be a slightly jerky process as the world goes through regulators trying to calibrate exactly where they are going to come out of these issues," he said.
In a speech at the same conference, Barclays PLC CEO John Varley echoed Hester's comments, saying "there is too much difference in the position of the economies and the banks across the world to make homogeneity of reform a viable or likely outcome."
Varley, however, said the only framework that "will create much greater resilience in global financial markets is a framework that is internationally consistent."
