EBA’s Huertas: credible stress-test is first task

The European Banking Authority (EBA) is only three months old, but it already has plenty to do. New bank stress tests are due in June, there is growing pressure to look at the shadow banking sector, and the Group of 20 wants more distance between big banks and the public purse. Thomas Huertas, the EBA’s alternate chair, talks to Duncan Wood

Just over two years ago, Jacques de Larosière, a former governor of the French central bank, called for a more integrated system of financial supervision in the European Union (EU), in which all national regulators would surrender some power and a set of three muscular new authorities would watch over the banking, insurance and securities markets. On January 1 this year, those authorities rose from the ashes of their predecessors and got to work immediately. This is regulation in post-crisis