Basel Accord

The Basel Accord(s) or Basle Accord(s) (see spelling section below) refers to the banking supervision Accords (recommendations on banking laws and regulations), Basel I and Basel II issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS).They are called the Basel Accords as the BCBS maintains its secretariat at the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland and the committee normally meets there.

The Basel Committee

The Basel Committee consists of representatives from central banks and regulatory authorities of the Group of Ten (economic) countries, plus others (specifically Luxembourg and Spain). The committee does not have the authority to enforce recommendations, although most member countries (and others) tend to implement the Committee's policies. This means that recommendations are enforced through national (or EU-wide) laws and regulations, rather than as a result of the committee's recommendations - thus some time may pass between recommendations and implementation as law at the national level.

Spelling

The Basel Committee is named after the Swiss town of Basel. In early publications, the committee sometimes used the English spelling "Basle" or the French spelling "Bâle," names that are sometimes still used in the press. More recently, the Committee has deferred to the predominantly German population of the region and used the spelling "Basel."

ee also

* Tier 1 capital
* Tier 2 capital
* Sarbanes-Oxley Act

References

*http://www.bis.org: The site of the Bank of International Settlements.
*http://bis2information.org: Practical articles, on BIS2 and risk modelling, submitted by professionals to help create an industry standard.