(Adds comments from British finance minister Hunt)
NIIGATA, Japan, May 13 (Reuters) - Finance ministers and
central banks from the Group of Seven rich nations agreed the
global financial system is resilient but the need for vigilance
remains, Japan's finance minister Shunichi Suzuki said on
Saturday.
The officials issued a joint statement vowing to address
regulatory gaps in the banking system discovered during recent
problems at U.S. and Swiss banks, and said they would continue
to work closely with supervisory and regulatory authorities to
monitor financial sector developments.
"We reaffirm that our financial system is resilient,
supported by the financial regulatory reforms implemented after
the 2008 global financial crisis, including considerable
increases in the levels of bank capital and liquidity, an
international framework for effectively resolving failing
institutions, and strengthened cross-border regulatory and
supervisory cooperation," it said.
British finance minister Jeremy Hunt told reporters at a
separate event that G7 finance chiefs in Japan had "very frank
and open discussions" about the challenges they face, including
banking regulation.
He said Britain believed the regulatory structures worked as
intended and prevented much worse problems, but there were
clearly lessons to be learned, including how digital transfers
had accelerated the rapid pace of deposit withdrawals.
He hailed Britain's rapid work to facilitate a private sale
of the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank to HSBC , a move
that protected deposits without taxpayer support, as a
regulatory achievement.
But he said Britain was reviewing the legal and regulatory
structures to ensure that people had access to their deposits as
quickly as possible during any future incidents.
Hunt said Britain was also thinking critically about how
many high-growth companies had been concentrated in one branch
of one American bank, and recognized that the financing options
for such sectors should be more diverse.
"We're looking at a wide range of things, including pension
fund reform to see if we can unlock more choices for those
companies," he said.
Suzuki also told a press conference the topic of the U.S.
debt ceiling came up during the working dinner on the global
economy although he declined to say what other ministers
discussed about the issue.
The ministers have wrapped up a three-day meeting in the
Japanese city of Niigata.
(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto, Leika Kihara and Andrea
Shalal; Writing by David Dolan
Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
