国际英语新闻：Financial Stability Board holds inaugural meeting in Basel

BASEL, Switzerland, June 27 (Xinhua) -- The Financial Stability Board (FSB), created by the Group of 20 in its London summit in April, held its inaugural meeting here on Saturday.

    The FSB is re-established by the G20 as an enlarged version of the Financial Stability Forum, an advisory group established in 1999 to promote international financial stability through better information exchange and international cooperation.

    According to its press release, the FSB's mandate is to assess vulnerabilities affecting the financial system; identify and oversee action needed to address them; promote coordination and information exchange among authorities responsible for financial stability; undertake joint strategic reviews of the policy development work of the international standards setting bodies; set guidelines for and support the establishment of supervisory colleges; and manage contingency planning for cross-border crisis management.

    To fulfill this mandate, the FSB established the FSB Plenary, a Steering Committee, and three Standing Committees - for Vulnerabilities Assessment, Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation and Standards Implementation.

    At the press conference after the inaugural meeting, the FSB chairman and Governor of the Bank of Italy Mario Draghi said "We are more or less back at what we were before Lehman, but we are not back to before the crisis."

    He referred to the collapse of U.S. banking giant Lehman Brothers last September.

    "An improvement yes, out of the woods, not yet," he noted.

    The FSB member institutions include the central banks, the finance ministries and supervision institution of more than 20 countries. The China's Finance Ministry, the People's Bank of China, China Banking Regulatory Commission and Hong Kong SAR Monetary Authority are all members of the FSB.