Office of International Affairs

International Banking and Securities Markets

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The Office of International Banking and Securities Markets provides analysis and policy advice to senior Treasury officials on: (a) measures to strengthen the financial sectors in individual countries to contribute to economic growth and development; and (b) efforts to promote sound international regulatory policy practices to support financial stability.

The Office of International Banking and Securities Markets is led by an office director and is divided into two divisions, the Bilateral and Regional Issues Division and the Global Policy Division. Each division is led by a deputy office director.

• Bilateral and Regional Issues Division covers issues relating to financial sector surveillance and vulnerabilities in specific countries; general banking issues in Europe, Japan, China, India, the Middle East, and elsewhere; financial sector issues in regional and bilateral fora such as MEPI, APEC, NAFTA, OECD, and SOA.*
• Global Policy Division covers cross-country and international policy issues related to remittances, terrorist financing and money laundering, international codes and standards, capital markets and corporate sectors; financial sector issues in international fora such as the G7/G8/G20 and the Financial Stability Forum.

Goals

• Improve capacity to monitor, analyze and provide recommendations to address financial sector weaknesses in key countries for improved integration into the surveillance and program design of International Financial Institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank).
• Promote banking sector reform and capital market development, and resolve technical regulatory issues through ongoing policy dialogues with key global partners, including the European Union, Japan , China , India and our NAFTA partners ( Canada and Mexico ).
• Anticipate and take action to mitigate via bilateral/multilateral engagement possible problems that could pose systemic consequences regionally or for the broader world economy.
• Work with U.S. financial regulators to promote best practices in international standard-setting fora.

Selected Accomplishments in 2004

• Led the G8 Sea Island Summit Remittance initiative, which raised the prominence of remittances and focused on establishing international guidelines for overseeing remittance service providers and for gathering and collection remittance data.
• Launched the remittance initiative under the Summit of Americas that seeks to cut the cost of remittances by half by 2008.
• Worked with the IMF and World Bank Executive Boards to make AML/CFT assessments a regular and permanent part of their institutions' financial sector work
• Led US government efforts to obtain IFI endorsement of the revised FATF 40+9 Recommendations.
• Chaired a FATF working group that cooperated with the IFIs to develop a methodology to assess country compliance with the AML/CFT standard.
• Led US efforts to develop revised internationally accepted OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and promote their use world-wide.
• Supported increased competition in U.S. and EU capital markets, including the decision by the CFTC approving Eurex's application to establish a futures exchange in the U.S.
• Helped to obtain affirmative determination by the EU Financial Conglomerates Committee that US supervision is broadly equivalent with that in proscribed in the Financial Conglomerates Directive.
• Helped establish the Middle East and North Africa Regulators' Training Initiative on bank supervision, which is a regional training program on bank supervision program.

* Acronyms
MEPI - Middle East Partnership Initiative
APEC - Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
NAFTA - North American Free Trade Agreement
OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
SOA - Summit of the Americas
AML/CFT - Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism