Responding in part to the guidance provided by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, E. Gerald Corrigan, Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Douglas Flint, Group Finance Director, HSBC Holdings Plc, today announced the formation of CRMPGIII which will be Co-Chaired by Messers Corrigan and Flint. The organizational meeting of the Policy Group was held on April 8, 2008.
In the setting of the current financial market crisis and building in part on the 2005 work of CRMPGII, the Policy Group will focus its analysis primarily on four major areas of inquiry, as follows:
First; to identify, in detail, opportunities for further improvements in risk management practices and make concrete recommendations to strengthen risk management activities with emphasis on such areas as the governance and controls over risk appetite, counterparty risk, market risk, and all aspects of liquidity risk.
Second; to revisit, in detail, the risks associated with complex financial instruments using recent experience to frame recommendations to enhance the understanding and management of the manner in which the leverage and embedded leverage often associated with such instruments tends to amplify risk. The analysis will also examine opportunities to improve the effectiveness of distribution, marketing and disclosure practices associated with such complex instruments from the perspective of both the buy and sell side.
Third; to examine, in detail, the issue of whether current accounting rules setting forth the criterion according to which certain classes of activities are booked on or off the balance sheet are 1) appropriate; 2) reflect economic reality; and 3) take full account of risk and disclosure considerations, and to make specific recommendations as to how such accounting rules and related risk disclosure practices will be strengthened thus contributing to improved market confidence in financial reporting.
Finally; the Policy Group will also examine, in detail, a number of areas in which further and substantial strengthening of industry wide financial infrastructure is badly needed with particular emphasis on the infrastructure supporting OTC derivatives in general and credit default swaps in particular.
The names and affiliations of the Policy Group members are listed below. The Policy group expects to issue its Report by the end of July of this year.