Financial regulation: The G20’s missing Chinese dream

The current fairly peripheral role of China in the global financial regulatory system is increasingly problematic. The system needs a guiding vision i

Publishing date: 26 October 2016
Authors: Nicolas Véron

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China’s recent emergence as a leading global economic and financial powerhouse has implications for all aspects of global governance. While a growing body of literature has analysed the consequences for international trade arrangements, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), fewer studies have focused on the cluster of institutions that oversee financial regulatory standard-setting and policy development at the global level, referred to here as the global financial regulatory system.

In spite of significant crisis-induced changes in the last decade, this system has not sufficiently adapted to the new reality of China’s prominence, and has remained unsustainably centred on incumbent North Atlantic financial systems. This lagging pattern is in the interest neither of the incumbents, nor of China, nor of the world as a whole.

In order to move towards a better institutional balance, global financial regulatory bodies should increase the presence and prominence of Chinese participants in their governance and operations. China should correspondingly offer greater engagement, and promote institutional improvements to address some of the challenges that the global system in its current form has been unable to tackle.

About the authors

Nicolas Véron

Nicolas Véron is a senior fellow at Bruegel and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. His research is mostly about financial systems and financial reform around the world, including global financial regulatory initiatives and current developments in the European Union. He was a cofounder of Bruegel starting in 2002, initially focusing on Bruegel’s design, operational start-up and development, then on policy research since 2006-07. He joined the Peterson Institute in 2009 and divides his time between the US and Europe.

Véron has authored or co-authored numerous policy papers that include banking supervision and crisis management, financial reporting, the Eurozone policy framework, and economic nationalism. He has testified repeatedly in front of committees of the European Parliament, national parliaments in several EU member states, and US Congress. His publications also include Smoke & Mirrors, Inc.: Accounting for Capitalism, a book on accounting standards and practices (Cornell University Press, 2006), and several books in French.

His prior experience includes working for Saint-Gobain in Berlin and Rothschilds in Paris in the early 1990s; economic aide to the Prefect in Lille (1995-97); corporate adviser to France’s Labour Minister (1997-2000); and chief financial officer of MultiMania / Lycos France, a publicly-listed online media company (2000-2002). From 2002 to 2009 he also operated an independent Paris-based financial consultancy.

Véron is a board member of the derivatives arm (Global Trade Repository) of the Depositary Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a financial infrastructure company that operates globally on a not-for-profit basis. A French citizen born in 1971, he has a quantitative background as a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique (1992) and Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (1995). He is trilingual in English, French and Spanish, and has fluent understanding of German and Italian.

In September 2012, Bloomberg Markets included Véron in its second annual 50 Most Influential list with reference to his early advocacy of European banking union.