Banks caught in complex rules need reprieve: Danish minister

Copenhagen

EUROPE has passed enough rules to see its banks through the next financial crisis. The biggest hurdle to effective oversight now is the bureaucratic labyrinth that threatens to undermine the whole project.

That's according to Denmark's minister in charge of financial legislation, Henrik Sass Larsen. "With the current capital requirements and supervision in place, I have a hard time seeing why anybody would want to ask for more," he said in Copenhagen on Tuesday. Basel III and Europe's capital requirements directive "introduced very complex legislation, so I'd rather urge that we de-bureaucratise all the legislation we've made".