Petersburg bank forum to focus on oversight, Basel II, stability

MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti) - An international banking conference being held in St. Petersburg starting Wednesday will focus on effective sectoral regulation and oversight, the Basel II risk-based capital rules, and stability in the sector.

Key-note speakers at the congress, which runs through June 10, will be Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev, CB First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov, and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, the conference's press service said Wednesday.

The second Basel Accord is a set of internationally accepted recommendations created to promote greater consistency in the way banks and banking regulators approach risk management across national borders.

Russia will start to introduce the first Basel II components into its convoluted banking sector only in 2008.

Basel II was drawn up by bank supervisors and central bankers from the 13 countries of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, set up in 1975 to bring together major players from leading industrialized nations, to revise international standards to measure the adequacy of a bank's capital. The committee works to encourage convergence toward common approaches and standards.