Basel III : Post-Financial Crisis International Financial Regulatory Reform

In the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, concern of systemic risk ultimately forced many national governments to take unprecedented action to inject liquidity, provide capital support and give guarantees to domestic and international financial institutions considered as systemically important or 'too big to fail,' thereby exposing taxpayers to losses associated with the aggressive, highly-leveraged investment decisions made by these financial institutions. The new Basel III, orchestrated by the Group of Twenty (“G-20”) countries which monitor its implementation through the operation of the Financial Stability Board (“FSB”), is set to address and mitigate the systematic risk problem by substantially increasing bank capital requirements. This article aims to critically examine and analyse why and how the Basel III framework is being employed to markedly reduce, at least theoretically, banks' incentives to take excessive risks, lowering the likelihood and severity of future crises and enabling banks to withstand, without the need for extraordinary government support, stresses of a magnitude associated with or similar to the global financial crisis of 2007-2009