The first version of this, in 1988, established minimum capital standards.
The results were then evaluated against strict minimum capital standards, in terms of both overall capital and tangible common equity.
The central bank governor, Dai Xianglong, said China would bring all four of its major state-owned banks up to international minimum capital standards by the end of 2001.
Like American banks, they will have to submit annual capital plans to the Fed demonstrating their ability to meet minimum capital standards even during times of upheaval.
In lieu of raising new capital, many European banks will stretch the capital they already have and meet minimum capital standards by shrinking, thereby cutting back on lending and damaging economic growth.
For firms operating in the securities business, there are no internationally agreed minimum capital standards, although most national regulators impose rules of their own (as does the EU, through its capital-adequacy directive).
In particular, they are expected to maintain minimum capital standards, set out in an international agreement, the Basel accord.Nevertheless, even in recent years banks and their supervisors have sometimes got things badly wrong.
According to Brian Waterhouse of HSBC Securities, the stockmarket's collapse this year means that without the new rules 14 big banks might well have failed to meet internationally agreed minimum capital standards when they closed their half-yearly accounts at the end of September.
As wholesale trade is now restricted to firms with a minimum capital of $25,000 (a fortune by Uzbek standards) and, she says, there is no competitive local supplier, she has to travel to Kazakhstan to stock up.
Mr Hoenig thought this could be prevented by supplementing the minimum capital requirement on the basis of supervisory inspections into underwriting standards.
