By Patrick Jenkins in Davos
The world?s biggest banks are set to have a new voice on the global regulatory stage as a little known body that acts as an umbrella group for three regional trade associations beefs up its profile and changes its top management.
The Global Financial Markets Association plans to reinvent itself as a body to represent the interests of the world?s biggest banks, as regulators around the world start to target the toughest new rules at a category of so-called GSifis – global systemically important financial institutions – most of which are banks, or GSibs in the jargon.
?We plan to shape ourselves around the GSib constituency and their concerns,? said Simon Lewis, the new chief executive of the GFMA.
Blythe Masters, the JPMorgan commodities boss who becomes the GFMA?s chairman, said it was a logical next step following the evolution of regional trade bodies.
The GFMA encompasses the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association in the US, the Association of Financial Markets in Europe, and Asifma, their Asian sister organisation.
?In the past, there were fragmented trade associations reflecting particular regional issues, or issues in certain asset classes or within sub-parts of firms,? said Ms Masters. ?But now the regulatory agenda in particular is more global.?
Ms Masters, who shot to fame as her derivatives expertise at JPMorgan put her at the heart of the first wave of the global financial crisis, is a higher profile appointment than her opposite number at Deutsche Bank, Michele Faissola, whom she replaces, although Mr Faissola is now tipped as a potential successor to Anshu Jain as head of Deutsche?s investment bank.
Plans to boost the prominence of the GFMA come as the two international regulatory bodies – the Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision – move forward with their agenda to set tougher standards on a global basis for the world?s banks.
Already the bulk of the new Basel III rule book on higher capital and liquidity standards has been announced.
Attention this year is likely to shift to efforts to come up with a ?resolution? regime – a blueprint for how banks should be restructured to facilitate easier break-up in case they fail.
As well as lobbying and providing expert advice on issues surrounding such global topics, the GFMA sees its role as one of joining dots between divergent regulatory initiatives, for example between the slew of Dodd-Frank legislation in the US and the interpretation of global rules by the European Commission in Brussels.
Although the GFMA will not have any banks as members itself, it points out that its high-powered board of directors already comprises representatives from 15 GSibs.
? The Financial Times Limited 2012