Michel Barnier, the European Union's commissioner for internal market and services, said new international rules to manage the collapse of a global banking giant wouldn't be ready before November's Group of 20 meeting.
In an interview with reporters Friday, Barnier said U.S. and European officials will continue to navigate through areas of disagreement, such as how best to set accounting standards and how to regulate securitization. He said there wouldn't be any agreement at the G-20 to set up a tax on financial transactions.
Barnier also said officials must agree at the G-20 that the new cross-border rules be finished promptly. "There's an urgency," Barnier said. "We should draw the lessons of the crisis before the next crisis happens. What worries me is that time for markets is much quicker, much faster than time for democracy."
The issue of "cross-border resolution" has posed problems for officials since the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. because countries did not have any mechanism to handle the downfall of a financial company that operates in multiple countries. Barnier was in Washington meeting with a host of U.S. officials, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
