Berlin    26-01-2010

Germany will host a meeting of finance ministers of 19 major industrialised and developing nations in Berlin this coming May, a month ahead of the G-20 Summit in to be held in Canada in June.

 Theme of that conference will be how best to regulate international financial markets in the future.

The German government and its Finance Ministry want to actively participate in this conference to give their impetus to all the G-20 nations – they want to be sure that the present economic crisis does not repeat itself. 

Leading economists and representatives from regulatory authorities and central banks have been invited, along with finance officials from G-20 and EU nations, probably not at ministerial level.

Also today the German Finance Minister Schaeuble has welcomed US President Obama’s proposed financial sector reforms.  

The German governments initial reaction has been that Obama’s proposals which will bar US banks from risky investments and  prevent them from using a  ‘too big to fail’ strategy were encouraging and would aid efforts to reform global financial markets.