Basel regulators still hope for 2005 date as doubts increase

The Basel II bank capital adequacy accord could still come into effect by 2005, even if quite late in that year, although the date very much hangs in the balance, international regulatory sources said in early March.

They were commenting on remarks by senior national regulators that the date was likely to slip to 2006 because of the complexity of the new risk-based accord, designed to replace the simpler current accord - Basel I - that dates from 1988. They were also speaking ahead of March meetings of global banking supervisors in Basel.

German Bundesbank president Ernst Welteke said in a mid-February newspaper interview that the new rules, which will determine how much reserve capital major banks must