The 1970s are often portrayed as the beginning of a new era of finance capitalism. The growth and internationalisation of banks' balance sheets, together with the return of banking crises, were important changes of the decade, and for the global evolution of capitalism. How did banking regulation and supervision react to this evolving environment? The literature places considerable emphasis on the role of the United States and, to a lesser extent, of the United Kingdom and Japan, in the emergence of global standards in banking regulation and supervision, and neglects the EEC influence. Based on the archives of central banks, international organisations and of one bankers' association, this article explores the relationships between the European and the global discussions in the development of international banking regulation and supervision. The article focuses on two case studies: the use of consolidation as a supervisory technique, which was the object of a Council directive in 1983; and EEC observation ratios, which were an early initiative of the EEC in the field of bank capital harmonisation. In both cases, parallel and connected discussions occurred in the European and global specialised committees, the Groupe de Contact and the Banking Advisory Committee on the EEC side, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision at the global level. The article examines the contacts between these committees and their reciprocal influence in their work, thereby shedding light on the connections between European integration and globalisation. It contends that the EEC played a more important role in the first steps of international banking regulation and supervision than commonly considered in the literature. The article further argues that European integration served as a globalisation laboratory in the field of banking regulation and supervision. Accordingly, the EEC used capitalism to foster its integration agenda but was soon overtaken by it.The regulation of the financial sector typically illustrates the close links between the process of European integration and globalisation. In the 1970s and 1980s, this sector experienced both a deep mutation and an increased number of failures and crises. A new era started with the chaos resulting from the end of the Bretton Woods system and the oil shock of 1973. These upheavals triggered regulatory reactions both at the domestic level and in the international arena, in order to cope with the rise of international banking and its associated risks. Banking supervision, that is the daily control of individual banks' activities to ensure the protection of depositors and the soundness of banking organisations, grew everywhere.However, international regulatory discussions had already started at the EEC level in the 1960s, without much connection with financial crises, but instead with a hope to coordinate and ideally harmonise the banking legislations of member countries. 1 International convergence and financial crisis prevention have thus been two important characteristics of bank...

The ambition of this book is to explore the various dimensions of the transition from a state-led to a market-led financial system from the 1970s onwards. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the phrase ‘deregulation’ became a particularly popular term in regulatory spheres, but what kind of change exactly deregulation was? The nine chapters of the book show that if some rules were indeed revoked, particularly in certain countries, other regulations were introduced, particularly in the field of prudential supervision. The combination of an increased surveillance and of more liberal rules marked the end of the twentieth century and differentiated this period from the late- nineteenth-century laissez-faire approach. Rising public debt, new monetary policies, globalization, and weak economic growth were often the main factors underlying the deregulatory moves in the financial sector.

More than ten years after the financial crisis, the challenges of European banking and of the eurozone highlight that the existence of a European common market in banking is at best partial. Examining how British and French commercial banks and banking associations responded to the plans for a European common market in banking between 1977 and 1992, this article contributes to explaining this partial character, and highlights that this project was primarily political. This challenges the widely held view that large companies tended to push for more integration. This article shows that until the mid-1980s, the banking sector was not necessarily calling for European financial integration in the form of a common market in banking for at least three reasons: they doubted the usefulness of such a move, they feared an increase in regulation, and I meant that banks focused more on domestic or global matters than on European ones.

The City of London has long attracted much academic and popular attention. However, little research has been done on the relationship between the City and the European Economic Community in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the accession of the United Kingdom in 1973. Based on archival material from central and commercial banks in the UK and France, this article explores the relationship between the City and the EEC, from the accession of the UK to the EEC in 1973 to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which was meant to be the year of the completion of the single financial market. The article explores two areas: the influence of the City on EEC financial regulation, and how this influence was exerted. It pays particular attention to two committees chaired by the Bank of England, the City Liaison Committee and the City EEC Liaison Committee, and to British banks. The article argues that if the EEC played a part in the formalisation of British banking regulation, the City also played a key role in shaping EEC plans for financial regulation.

No abstract