We had to balance multiple, intertwined goals – always with an eye on potential unintended consequences. There were plenty of open questions. Do the new rules distort risk-taking behaviour? Do they truly resolve threats – or simply shift problems? How can we level the playing field for a diverse global banking sector? And so on.
So the finalisation package was about achieving a balanced overall set of rules. This required us to study the details, to review every single rule with great thoroughness, often multiple times. And this is essentially what we did in the past years. The second reason why finalisation took so long lies in the diversity of the views of the countries involved in the negotiations.