LONDON (Reuters) - Following are highlights of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s news conference after the G20 summit.
“Since Bretton Woods, the world has been living on a financial model, the Anglo-Saxon model — it’s not my place to criticize it, it has its advantages — clearly, today, a page has been turned.”
SARKOZY ON OFF-BALANCE SHEET ITEMS
“We decided that from now there will be an international norm which will define the capital base of banks. This too is unprecedented.
“We have decided to reintegrate off-balance sheet items ... in the calculations of capital requirements formulated by supervisors.
“To be clear, this means that the supervisory authorities will require capital to include not only the balance sheet of banks ... but also off-balance sheet items.
“That our Anglo-Saxon friends accepted all of this represents immense progress. I think that we have never been able to progress (on this) at a meeting of this nature.”
SARKOZY ON TAX HAVENS “On tax havens, in the communique, you will see a phrase that I quote verbatim: ‘The time of banking secrecy is over’.”
“We contacted the leaders of the OECD during the meeting so that it publishes the list of tax havens and ... that is in the coming two hours.”
“(The results of the summit) are beyond what we could have imagined ... We are all happy with the results.”
“Germany and France wanted to go beyond this (level). But what was retained was the principle. And you understand, that although there were many people sitting around the table, the principle of a traceability of securitization was made. It was retained.”
