LONDON, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Following are comments by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King at a news conference after the bank released its Financial Stability Report on Thursday.
Quotes are by King unless otherwise stated.
KING ON 'TOO BIG TO FAIL' ISSUE:
'What is absolutely crucial not to do is to create yet another too important to fail institution, because by concentrating the risk the concern is everyone says then they must have access to the government or central bank funding because they are too important to fail.'
BOE'S PAUL TUCKER ON BANK REFORM:
'We are acutely conscious on FSB and indeed in the FPC that as we change the regime, improve the regime for banks it would be an absolute disaster if we merely incentivised the riskier structures to move off piste, only to blow up in our successors' faces.'
'Whether this is the right moment to be proceeding with the reforms: what we believe, and we as not only the FPC but also international policymakers on the Financial Stability Board, is that were we to backtrack now that would actually be depleting to confidence. Financial markets, savers need to believe that a safer financial system is being built.'
KING ON VICKERS BANKING REPORT:
'The Financial Policy Committee welcomes the recommendations of the report of things that should be implemented, really as soon as possible.'
'The legislation needs to be pulled into effect sooner rather than later but there needs to be a transtition period, during which banks are asked to actually put this into practice.
'Vickers suggested that that be linked to the timetable for Basel, that doesn't seem unreasonable, but the important thing is to make sure that everyone knows that this will happen, there's no way out of it. And for that legislation needs to be put into place.'
BOE'S ANDREW HALDANE ON SECURED LENDING:
'Looking ahead some banks globally are already talking about the second half skew towards secured lending levels being maintained. That has led us to look closely at how much of banks existing balance sheets are set aside to see are quotas right.'
KING ON GILT YIELDS:
'I don't think you could put it all down to our asset purchases because we have only restarted them relatively recently.'
'Much of the relative fall in gilt yields against other countries, in particular against Germany pre-dated that, so there is no doubt that we are not facing the solvency challenges which all countries in the euro area are.'
'Creditors and debtors are in it together and we are not in that position in the euro area, that's immensely fortunate for us.'
KING ON LIQUIDITY:
'What we are trying to do is to say where there are opportunities to increase capital and liquidity, take them. We are not changing the ratios or providing any incentives to reduce lending to the real economy, we're just saying where the are opportunities to boost capital take them, because that will enable you to be more resilient given the problems that may come down the road, but keep lending to the real economy.'
KING ON FEARS OF CREDIT CRUNCH:
'I think you can see signs of a crunch already in the euro area. I don't think that's begun yet but you could see how that would come through here if funding costs were to continue to be as high.'
KING ON CAPITAL:
'I don't think you can say how much capital is required... How much capital does a bank need in order to have the confidence of people prepared to fund the bank, lend to it for several years so the bank can then lend the money on to businesses and households?... There is no simple answer to the question of how much capital banks need to retain their (funders') confidence.'
KING ON SWAPS DEAL:
'It was not designed to deal with specific problems. Nor was it designed merely to give a gesture. It was designed with deal with clear evidence that there were problems in banks around the world, who had difficulty in accessing dollars, in particular.
'But we decided we wanted to take the opportunity of putting in place, a general network of swap agreements which would demonstrate that if this problem were to be found in other currencies then the solution was there to be found.'
'So, I think it has the benefit of demonstrating that central banks can and do work together but that's not why we did it. We know that. The market will now realise that. We work extremely closely together and talk very often, but this generalised network of swap agreements, I think is a step forward and will help.'
'But let me stress, this cannot be a solution to the underlying crisis, all this can do, is to help temporarily relieve liquidity problems. But liquidity problems, often, reflect underlying solvency problems and in this case they do.'
ON EUROZONE DEBTS
'There comes a point where the creditors need to realise that the scale of the debt owed to them is so large that they may have to be part of the solution.'
'Merely providing temporary relief to this problem in the eurozone, and ensuring the imbalances continue even further, is not a solution, it buys time to put in place a solution.'
ON CAPITAL AND LIQUIDITY:
'Clearly this is not the moment to be raising capital levels or liquidity levels. If there are a continuation these liquidity problem buffers can be rundown.'
'A fundamental point in this report is that at present what is needed is to find a way not of raising capital of liquidity ratios because to do that would be a direct incentive for banks around the world to deleverage and to reduce their lending to the real economy.'
'What is most important is to try to find ways of boosting the resilience of capital and liquidity of banks.'
KING ON SWAP AGREEMENTS:
'As far as the swap agreements that were published yesterday by the group of central banks that made the announcement. This was not an action of the FPC. It was not involved in it. It was the result of conversations which I initiated as chairman of what used to be known as the G10 governors, now the economic consultative committee among a limited number of central banks.'
HECTOR SANTS (FSA) ON BONUSES:
'We can absolutely make sure that that distribution (between shareholders and employees) is consistent with the FPC's recommendation that capital levels should be raised. We now have a well-established process, which is coming into its second year, which involves banks' presenting to us forward capital funding and distribution plans... They have to preset those plans to the FSA before distributing any bonuses.'
HECTOR SANTS (FSA), LIQUIDITY RULES:
'I think it's really important to understand, the FSA does not impose binding rules in the area of liquidity.'
'We did, in fact, indeed in 2007, introduce a new approach to liquidity management, the first half of this year 2011, required firms to build up liquidity. I think it's recognised by the bank, that's been a very helpful intervention by us and its certainly, within the current difficult market conditions, they have a buffer which they can utilise.
OPTIONS:
'I don't think policy makers are running short of ammunition.'
'If debt is not to become exploding to evermore unsustainable levels, transfers will be required together with the plan to restore the competitiveness within the euro area.'
NATURE OF CRISIS:
'The crisis in the euro area is one of solvency and not liquidity. And the interconnectedness of major banks means the banking systems and economies around the world are all affected. Only the governments directly involved can find a way out of this crisis. But here in the UK, we must try to bolster the resilence of the financial system, better to withstand the storms, that may come in our direction.
ON CONTINGENCY PLANS:
'The government together with the FSA and the Bank of England are making contingency plans against a wide range of contingencies, but I'm not going to go into detail as to what those are, but we are certainly making contingency plans.'
'Maybe it (the euro zone) won't break up, maybe it will continue in various forms but maybe there will still be questions of default. None of us really know.'
ON CAPITAL:
'If earnings are insufficient to built capital levels further banks should limit distributions and give serious consideration to raising external capital in the coming months. This doesn't reflect the view that the current level of capital in UK banks is insufficient, indeed, UK banks are better capitalised than many of our continental peers.'
'It is sensible to raise the capital buffer further in order to improve resilience in light of the continuing threat to UK financial stability. While at the same time provide banks with the capacity to provide credit to the wider economy.'
ON CONFIDENCE:
'An erosion of confidence, lower asset prices and tighter credit conditions are further damaging the prospects for economic activity and will affect the ability of companies, households and governments to repay their debts, and that in turn will weaken banks' balance sheets further. This spiral is characteristic of a systemic crisis.'
(Uk economics team)
(uk.economics@reuters.com +44 207 542 7748)
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