Dismissing calls to weaken or reconsider global financial reforms, Jaime Caruana, General Manager, Bank for International Settlements, argues that it is more important than ever to continue reforms and see through what has already begun.  Caruana lays out in a recent address before the 2012 ADB Financial Sector Forum four principles he feels should guide these ongoing reform efforts.

K&L Gates' 2012 Annual Outlook provides a valuable collection of articles that address important industry and regulatory trends and their correlation with government and political developments. This edition highlights regulatory issues in areas such as: systemic financial risk regulation, anti-corruption and white-collar enforcement initiatives, tax policies, competition and antitrust law matters, intellectual property and international trade developments. Of particular interest in this year's report is the section on financial services. In this chapter, K&L Gates covers, among other things, updates on regulatory efforts and emerging developments that K&L Gates has identified as areas global financial professionals should keep on their radar screens

Over the past few months, spreads for credit default swaps (CDS) have widened quite dramatically. These widening CDS spreads are a clear sign of stress on banks, and that the cost of protecting financial
institution and government debt against default is steadily rising, causing worry across the global financial markets.