This allows the value-added of each sector to be measured more or less directly. For example, gross output of a second-hand car dealer can be calculated as the cash value of all cars sold. The value added of that dealer would then be estimated by subtracting its intermediate consumption (the value of cars bought) from gross output. This is also the case for some of the services provided by the financial sector. 1 For example, investment banks charge explicit fees when they advise clients on a merger or acquisition. Fees or commissions are also levied on underwriting the issuance of securities and for the market-making activities undertaken for clients. But such direct charges account for only part of the financial system’s total revenues. Finance – and commercial banking in particular – relies heavily on interest flows as a means of payment for the services they provide. Banks charge an interest rate margin to capture these intermediation services. To measure the value of financial services embedded in interest rate margins, the concept of FISIM – Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured – has been developed internationally. The concept itself was introduced in the 1993 update of the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA). The SNA recognises that financial intermediaries  1  For further details refer to, for example, Akritidis L (2007). BIS Review 95/2010  3  provide services to consumers, businesses, governments and the rest of the world for which explicit charges are not made.
In some jurisdictions, such as the UK, the securities regulator is the listing authority. In others, such as the US, listing documentation is approved by exchanges, with minimum disclosure requirements set by the securities regulator. This is tied up with whether regimes retain an element of Self-Regulatory Organisations. 9  In the UK, although the FSA was given a “financial stability” objective in 2010, it did not apply to its functions as UK Listing Authority. The proposed objectives of the planned new securities and conduct regulator, the FCA, are intended to apply to the UKLA. 10  IOSCO Objectives and Principles of Securities Regulation (2010). 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  whole in ways that are opaque to everyone. For example, in the USA, as the SEC has commented, a lot of structured-finance products, including pretty well all CDOs and AssetBacked CP, were issued privately and so were exempt from a panoply of disclosure requirements that apply to “registered” offerings.11 Reducing that opacity, and ensuring the integrity of these market mechanisms, could well be in the interests of investors in private placements themselves. This issue is not easy. On the one hand, it is reasonable for the regulatory regime to make allowance for private transactions amongst “consenting adults”. And the issuance of small amounts of any type of security cannot possibly jeopardise stability.