The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority will defer a decision on its planned framework for the supervision of conglomerate groups until after the release of the recommendations of the Financial System Inquiry and the Government's response to them.The regulator's shift, announced on Friday, is open to interpretation. One object of the framework for the supervision of conglomerate groups is to expunge double counting of capital, where this continues."Intra-group exposures and external aggregate exposures … must be transparent and prudently managed," APRA has said."Robust governance … that is applied appropriately throughout the group" and "an effective group-wide risk management framework," are two more objectives.The interim report of David Murray's FSI panel does not appear to include the words conglomerate or conglomerates.So the context for APRA's procrastination appears to be Murray's warm support for an extra capital blanket - on large banks at least.APRA is contemplating applying the conglomerate rules to eight groups that control approximately 80 per cent of the assets of APRA-regulated institutions. These are AMP, ANZ, Challenger Limited, Commonwealth Bank, Macquarie, National Australia Bank, Suncorp and Westpac.