Higher ground

Plans are afoot among global regulators to impose tougher regulatory requirements on large and systemically important firms, including higher capital charges. Will they succeed in curtailing systemic risk? Mark Pengelly investigates

Regulatory responses to the financial crisis have delivered a message to market participants: size matters. Systemic risk has become a focal point for supervisors, and efforts to ward it off include placing tighter regulations on large, systemically important banks - many of which have regularly clocked up 10-digit quarterly losses since the onset of market trauma.

In some ways, this doesn't represent a huge change from existing regulatory practices, argues Rich Spillenkothen, a former director