Morrison & Foerster - Regulatory Capital: January 1, 2013 Deadline Eased

This morning, the three federal bank regulatory agencies announced that their proposed new capital rules based on Basel III (and other Basel standards) would not take effect on January 1, 2013, a date previously proposed apparently in order to adhere to international consensus. The announcement was overdue. The comment period for the three proposed capital rules ended only a few weeks ago on October 22, 2012. The agencies received hundreds of comments that they will have to digest in order to finalize the rules, making implementation on January 1, 2013, a practical impossibility.

January 1, 2013, was set by international agreement as the effective date for new Basel-based rules in all countries. The United States will not be the only jurisdiction to miss this deadline. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (the "BCBS") released preliminary reviews of the implementation of Basel III in the European Union, the United States, and Japan. Only Japan has new rules in place. The European Parliament is expected to take up its version of the new rules, colloquially known as CRD IV, on November 20, 2012, in plenary session. If Parliament approves CRD IV, it will go to the European Council for review. Finalization, accordingly, will take several months.

The announcement leaves two questions that the agencies did not answer.

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