By Kevin Drawbaugh and Huw Jones
WASHINGTON/LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - The United States and the European Union have set out their agendas for financial regulation reform and they look remarkably similar going into an April 2 summit of the Group of 20 leading nations.
The London summit will produce broad principles for a global realignment of oversight of world finance amid a severe capital markets crisis that is hammering economies worldwide.
But the United States and the European Union, with 70 percent to 80 percent of the world's capital market between them, will make decisions that will put pressure on the rest of the world to fall in line.
Similarities between EU and U.S. approaches will be welcomed by big banks, hedge funds, and credit rating agencies who want a global approach to replace a patchwork of local rules which impose higher compliance costs.
The EU and the United States will also be keen to avoid major discrepancies in their strategies to stop some market participants from playing a game of regulatory arbitrage by gravitating to the jurisdiction with the least strict rules.
Hedge funds would face a unified, transatlantic blast of regulation under proposals being put forth by both the EU and the Obama administration which presented a broad set of reform initiatives at a congressional hearing on Thursday.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called for mandatory registration with U.S. authorities of all advisers to hedge funds, private equity funds, and venture capital funds with assets above a level yet to be set. These sorts of funds now are only loosely regulated in the United States.
The U.S. proposal is in line with an anticipated draft EU law to be published on April 21 outlining mandatory registration and reporting requirements.
Both the United States and the EU envision new regulators to oversee "systemic risk," or overall threats to the stability of the financial system and to the health of economies.
However, the mechanics of setting up systemic risk oversight are still far from understood in both jurisdictions.
Britain's Financial Services Authority, which regulates the EU's biggest banking center, has been reluctant to lose its broad supervisory powers. These would be handed to new systemic risk authorities under the EU plan.
In the United States, the central bank looks like the front-runner to take on systemic risk. But some lawmakers have misgivings and a long debate in Congress looms.
At the committee hearing, Geithner also urged the establishment of a central clearing house for credit default swaps. The United States has already taken stepts in this direction.
Banks have undertaken to clear European dealings on EU soil from July to avoid the bloc pushing ahead with legislation.
DERIVATIVES TARGETED
But Geithner went further than the EU in calling for a "comprehensive framework of oversight, protections and disclosure" for derivatives traded off-exchange.
The new framework, he said, should also encourage further use of exchange-traded instruments, a move that exchanges will welcome as they seek to boost revenues and tap more of the huge over-the-counter trading sector.
The EU's executive European Commission is reviewing the whole area of derivatives and will watch U.S. moves closely.
Geithner also called for a more systematic government
approach to problems at financial institutions, including
insurance companies such as American International Group
Some insurance industry lobbyists are trying to shoe-horn the idea of a national U.S. regulator for insurers into the intensifying reform debate.
U.S. insurers presently have no national regulator. Rather, they answer to dozens of state-based oversight authorities. Some in the industry like it that way, while others favor a central regulator as less costly.
The EU has been campaigning for years to end a U.S. practice that forces European reinsurers and Lloyds insurance market syndicates to set aside extra collateral in the United States if they want to do business there.
But the EU has faced having to deal with many state regulators to lobby for change, a difficult and time consuming process. EU officials say a single U.S. insurance regulator would make changing the collateral rule easier. (Reporting by Huw Jones in London, Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington)