50 banks on G-SIBS list for capital surcharge

The number of globally active banks that will have to lift their capital ratios may be as high as 50, Reuters and Dow Jones reported on Sunday from the G20 summit of Finance ministers on Sunday.

If the list is as long as 50 it might capture one or more of Australia's four largest banks, though local regulators and the local industry have managed to exclude the sector from the evolving list of globally systematically important banks in discussions on the topic earlier this year.

The list will be released at a meeting of G20 political leaders in Cannes on November 3, and is likely to leak before then.

In June, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, proposed that G-SIBs will need to hold additional tier-one equity equivalent to between 1.0 and 2.5 per cent of assets, depending on their size and influence. This capital will be on top of the 7.0 per cent of assets that the Basel III framework requires all banks to hold as tier-one capital. Banks will have to meet these targets by 2016.

At the time the Basel Committee proposed that the number of affected banks was around 30.