International concern on bank capital and minimum capital adequacy was first raised in 1980, in the G-10 countries governors meeting at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to respond to a series of bank failures and financial instability observed in Western developed economies. Later,...

This paper distils three lessons for bank regulation from the experience of the 2009-12 euro-area financial crisis. First, it highlights the key role that sovereign debt exposures of banks have played in the feedback loop between bank and fiscal distress, and inquires how the regulation of...