Christine Lagarde, stressed the very slow progress in completing banking sector’s reforms, underlining that it is being inhibited by the industry lobby.

The head of the IMF noted that banks are now holding more capital, compared with the period before the financial crisis, stressing that taxpayers were called upon to save their financial institutions.

“The bad news is that progress is too slow and the end is still far away”, said Lagarde at a conference in London.
While acknowledging that the task of banking reform is complicated, she stressed that progress has been slow due to “intense resistance by the industry lobby”, as well as fatigue, which is normal at this stage of a long race.

“A big pitfall is that the problem of “too big to fail” banks has not been solved yet”, stated Lagarde, referring to the belief of markets that governments will rush to rescue the largest banks to avoid a crisis caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The IMF head called on supervisory authorities around the world to agree on a framework for the liquidation of large banks facing great difficulties.