Bankers in the leading industrialised countries intend to press hard in the next few months for further significant changes to the New Basel Capital Accord, proposed by the industry's global regulators. There are signs that the regulators will be amenable to any convincing case for changing the current proposals, which are intended to provide a new framework for the management of credit, market and operational risks by banks around the world.

Proposals for dealing with operational risks, such as fraud, computer system failures and trade settlement screw-ups, are proving particularly contentious. The array of unresolved issues around operational risk is one of the main reasons for the decision by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the body that, in effect, regulates international banking, to delay by a year the implementation of the new accord. It will now come into effect in 2005 (replacing the original 1988 capital accord).