GLOBAL FINANCIAL REFORM
How might the 2015 International Conference on
Financing for Development strengthen reform momentum?
A Roundtable discussion
20 October 2014
UN Headquarters, New York, Room S-2723 BR - Board Room
The recent financial crisis – and the "great recession" that has followed – imposed enormous costs on
the global economy and irreparable damage on the livelihoods of those who could afford it least. This
crisis is not the first, nor will it be the last. The causes of financial crises are various and intensely
debated, as are the proposals to prevent future crises. However, given the global, interconnected nature
of finance, successful crisis mitigation requires global coordination and cooperation. In 2009, the G20,
the IMF and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) took active joint leadership of global economic and
financial cooperation. Policies were then developed to strengthen regulation of banks and major
financial markets. They included bringing virtually unregulated activities under supervision. But
implementation has lagged earlier ambitions. Inadequate regulation continues to threaten the stability
of global financial markets. Large areas of the financial sector remain disconnected from the real
economy.
This Roundtable brings together diverse stakeholders to discuss the current state of international
financial architecture reforms, obstacles to implementing reforms and additional reforms needed to
reduce the risks of systemic crises in the global and national financial systems. Participants are
expected to include representatives of central banks and governments, international organizations, the
financial sector, academia and civil society. Focus of the discussions will be G20, IMF and FSB
initiatives, and how the UN, as a development oriented platform for dialogue among relevant
stakeholders, can help make the global financial system more stable, efficient and responsible.
Each session aims for a lively and unscripted discussion following brief introductory remarks by lead
speakers of about 5-10 minutes each. The dialogue is taking place in the context of intergovernmental
preparations for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, 13 to 16 July 2015
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Regulatory reform forms part of the “systemic issues” section of the agenda as
adopted in the “Monterrey Consensus” of the first Financing for Development conference. This
Conference is expected to help shape the post-2015 global development agenda, to be agreed at the
September 2015 Heads of State Meeting at the UN. It is a chance for political leaders, business and civil
society to discuss key issues and proposals and help government negotiators formulate concrete policy
measures at United Nations and other international forums.
R.S.V.P. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected] by 18 October 2014
Agenda
10am–1pm
Welcome:
Alex Trepelkov, Director, FfD Office/DESA/UN
Eva Hanfstaengl, Bread for the World, Berlin
The state of prudential regulation of banking and shadow banking
Introduction of background study: Matthias Thiemann, University of Frankfurt
Paths to a safer and more effective financial system
Moderator: Daniela Gabor, University of West of England
F. Christopher Calabia, Senior Vice President, Financial Institution Supervision Group, Federal
Reserve Bank of New York
Stephany Griffith-Jones, Financial Markets Program Director, Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia
University
Amar Bhattacharya, Brookings Institution, Global Economy and Development
Peter F. Brennan, Chairman, Competitive Technologies and former Chair, Corporate Governance
Committee, New York Society of Security Analysts
Saule Omarova, Cornell Law School
Open discussion
Lunch break
3pm–6pm
The global politics of reform
Moderator: Barry Herman, The New School
Shari Spiegel, Chief, Policy Development and Analysis Branch, FfD Office/DESA/UN
Marilou Uy, Director of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary
Affairs and Development (G-24)
Robert Hockett, Fellow of the Century Foundation and Cornell Law School
Jo-Marie Griesgraber, New Rules for Global Finance
Kevin Young, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Open discussion
Wrap up and next steps: Shari Spiegel, Chief, FfD Office/DESA/UN and
Eva Hanfstaengl, Bread for the World, Berlin
Bios
Amar Bhattacharya is Senior Fellow in Global Economy and Development at Brookings Institution. Prior he
has been Director of the G24 Secretariat. Mr. Bhattacharya has been closely involved in the ongoing discussions
on the impact of and responses to the global economic and financial crisis, including the reform of the Bretton
Woods institutions. Prior to taking up his current position, Mr. Bhattacharya had a long career in the World Bank.
His last position was as Senior Advisor and Head of the International Policy and Partnership Group in the Poverty
Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank. In this capacity, he was advisor to the
President and Senior Management and focal point for the Bank’s engagement with key international groupings
and institutions such as the G7/G8, G20, IMF, OECD and the Commonwealth Secretariat, including on the reform
of the international financial architecture. He has published widely. Mr. Bhattacharya is an Indian national who
completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Delhi and at Brandeis University and his graduate study
at Princeton University.
Peter F. Brennan, Chairman of the Board, Competitive Technologies and Founder, Damel Investors LLC; past
Chairman, Corporate Governance Committee, NY Society of Security Analysts. Peter Brennan is a New York based
investor who has worked over 30 years in the investment management business as an analyst and portfolio
manager. In 2004 Mr. Brennan founded Damel Investors LLC, a private partnership which invests in small
technology companies. Since 2005 Mr. Brennan has been a director and a member of the audit committee of
Sonomax Technologies Inc., a Montreal based hearing healthcare company. Mr. Brennan received his MBA from
the University of Chicago in 1979 and his BA from Haverford College in 1977. He is a member and past Chairman
of the Corporate Governance Committee of the New York Society of Security Analysts and received the 2001
Volunteer of the Year award from the NYSSA. Mr. Brennan was a member of the US Advocacy Committee of the
CFA Institute and was a founding member of the Capital Markets Policy Council of the CFA Institute for Market
Integrity, the global advocacy committee of the CFA Institute.
F. Christopher Calabia is a Senior Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he has
worked since 1993, specializing in the regulation of internationally active banks. Mr. Calabia is currently head of
the Regional, Community, and Foreign Institutions Supervision and Consumer Compliance Function, an 80person division that regulates over 200 U.S. and foreign banking organizations. As an experienced bank examiner,
he also oversaw the supervision of one of the largest and most complex U.S. financial institutions from 2009-2011;
he then served as deputy head of the Complex Financial Institutions Function from 2011-2013. Previously, Mr.
Calabia was seconded to the Secretariat of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in Switzerland from
2003-2005, where he assisted in the development of the global “Basel II” capital requirements for banks. He
continues to represent the Federal Reserve in international working groups. Mr. Calabia is a graduate of the
Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (M.A.L.D.) and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia
(B.A.); he additionally studied European Union law and integration at the Universität des Saarlandes (Germany)
as a DAAD Fellow. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a U.S.- Japan Leadership Program
Fellow; a U.S.-Spain Young Leaders Program Fellow; and a Next Generation Project Fellow at the American
Assembly (Columbia University).
Jo Marie Griesgraber is the Executive Director of the New Rules for Global Finance Coalition, a Washingtonbased international network of activists and researchers concerned with reforms of the international financial
architecture. Previously, Dr. Griesgraber was Director of Policy at Oxfam America where she supervised advocacy
programs on international trade, humanitarian response, global funding for basic education and extractive
industries. Before that, she directed the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project at the Center of Concern, a Jesuit
related social justice research centre, where she worked on reform of the World Bank, regional development banks
and International Monetary Fund. She has taught political science at Georgetown University, Goucher College and
American University, and was Deputy Director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights lobby
office. She chaired Jubilee 2000/USA's Executive Committee and edited, with Bernhard Gunter, the five volume
Rethinking Bretton Woods series. Ms. Griesgraber received her Ph.D. in political science from Georgetown
University and her B.A. in history from the University of Dayton, Ohio.
Stephany Griffith Jones is currently Financial Markets Program Director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue
at Columbia University. As an economist (BA Universidad de Chile, PhD Cambridge) she is working on global
capital flows, with special reference to flows to emerging markets and on macro-economic management of capital
flows in Latin America, Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. Her policy work includes proposals for
international measures to diminish volatility of capital flows and reduce the likelihood of currency crises as well as
for international financial reform.
Robert Hockett is a Fellow of the Century Foundation and regular commissioned author for the New America
Foundation. He also does regular consulting work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the International
Monetary Fund, Americans for Financial Reform, the 'Occupy' Cooperative, and a number of federal and state
legislators and local governments. Robert Hockett joined the Cornell Law Faculty in 2004. His principal teaching,
research, and writing interests lie in the fields of organizational, financial, and monetary law and economics in
both their positive and normative, as well as their national and transnational, dimensions. His guiding concern in
these fields is with the legal and institutional prerequisites to a just, prosperous, and sustainable economic order.
Prior to doing his doctoral work and entering academe, he worked for the International Monetary Fund and
clerked for the Honorable Deanell Reece Tacha, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Saule Omarova specializes in regulation of financial institutions, banking law, international finance, and
corporate finance. Before joining Cornell Law School in 2014, she was the George R. Ward Associate Professor of
Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Prior to joining academia, Professor Omarova practiced
law in the Financial Institutions Group of Davis, Polk, & Wardwell, a premier New York law firm, where she
specialized in a wide variety of corporate transactions and advisory work in the area of financial regulation. In
2006-2007, she served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Special Advisor for Regulatory Policy to the
Under Secretary for Domestic Finance.
Shari Spiegel is Chief, Policy Analysis & Development Branch, at UN DESA's Financing for Development office.
Proir she worked in the team for the UN World Economic and Social Survey as a Senior Economic Affairs Officer
in May 2010. She is co-author and co-editor of several of books and articles on capital and financial markets, debt,
and macroeconomics and has an MA (ABD) in economics from Princeton University and a BA in applied
mathematics and economics from Northwestern University. She served as Executive Director of the Initiative for
Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think-tank presided over by Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University. She has extensive
experience at the private sector, most recently as a Principal at New Holland Capital and as head of fixed-income
emerging markets at Lazard Asset Management. She also served as an advisor to the Hungarian Central Bank in
the early 1990s.
Matthias Thiemann is Professor of the Sociology of Financial Markets, Banking and Money at Goethe
University Frankfurt/ Main. As a sociologist (BA HU Berlin, PhD Columbia University) his work focuses on the
cognitive and political dynamics explaining financial regulation pre- and post-crisis, in particular of the shadow
banking system. His policy analyses include work for the UNDP and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia
University, focusing on questions of the impact of recent regulatory initiatives on developing countries and on the
role of NGOs in the formulation and enactment of prudent financial regulation.
Marilou Uy is Director of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs and
Development (G-24). The G24 was established in 1971 as a representative body of Finance Ministers and Central
Bank Governors of developing countries with the objective of helping to articulate and support the position of
developing countries in the discussions of the IMF, World Bank and other relevant fora. Prior she was Sector
Director for the Africa Financial and Private Sector Development Department at the World Bank. Previously, she
served as Director of the Financial Sector Operations and Policy Department in the Financial Sector VicePresidency (FSE) as well as Chair of the Financial Sector Board from 2002 to 2007. Ms. Uy joined the World Bank
in 1985 as part of the Young Professionals Program. Since then, Ms. Uy has worked on trade policy, investment
climate, and financial sector issues in various operational departments in Latin America, Middle East, South Asia,
and Africa, and globally. She was also part of the Development Economics Group's research team that prepared
"The East Asian Miracle" in 1991, in which she focused on financial sector issues, together with Joseph Stiglitz. In
1993, Ms. Uy also worked with the World Bank's Financial Management and Country Credit Worthiness
Department. In 1996, she became the Division Chief of the Private Sector Development and Finance Division in
the South Asia Department. In 1998, she became the Sector Director of the Finance and Private Sector
Development Department in the South Asia Region. Prior to joining the World Bank, Ms. Uy pursued her
graduate studies in economics and finance at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Kevin Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst. His research focuses on the political economy of financial regulation and the role of organized business
in shaping policy. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics in 2010 and is the co-author (with
Tom Hale and David Held) of Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing When We Need it Most, and
numerous articles in academic journals on the subject of financial regulation, business lobbying dynamics, and
international political economy.