G20
The G20 – a group comprising the 20 economically strongest industrial and emerging-market countries – represents around two-thirds of the world’s population, 90% of its output and 80% of its trade. Set up by finance ministers in Berlin in 1999 as a result of the financial turmoil in the ASEAN countries, it has now replaced the G8 as the leading forum for global coordination in economic policy. The first G20 summit in Washington in November 2008 saw the adoption of an ambitious plan for a globally coordinated response to the deficiencies and challenges revealed by the financial crisis. This plan, which has been partly implemented in the meantime, includes curbing macroeconomic imbalances, ensuring a coordinated exit from the expansionary course in monetary and fiscal policy and, last but not least, adapting financial market regulation globally to take account of the lessons learned from the crisis.
The institutional substructure needed to perform the last-named task was provided by the existing bodies and standard-setters such as the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) or the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), whose membership and governance have been expanded in step with the inclusion of emerging-market countries in the G20. The FSF, which has been operating since April 2009 as the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and is the central coordinating body for all financial market reform initiatives, has gained particularly in importance.
The Association of German Banks actively supports the G20 processes and conveys its position on individual issues to the German government, the European Commission and the various international standard-setters.
