As a conclusion, I would like to make three remarks: on the global financial markets, on the euro and on the People’s Republic of China. –  On the global financial markets, I will draw our attention to one of the most important challenges we have to face up with: the “herd instinct” of market participants, which, in certain cases, can amplify considerably volatility, create or augment misalignments and induce large-scale global contagion in case of local crisis. The herd instinct is probably profoundly enshrined in the functioning of the marketplace. In order to minimize its effects, I have three provisional conclusions: •  Perhaps we should have a second look at the very rapid generalization of day to day mark to market accountings. Perhaps a better medium term functioning of the market would call for a clear distinction between various market participants depending on their own time horizons. •  It seems to me that it would also be important to reflect upon the consequences of the very rapid increase of mutual funds in some major markets. All the managers of these funds have to prove permanently on a very short-term basis that they are better managed than the average. This creates a very powerful potential herd instinct. •  Finally, I profoundly think that full transparency is the most efficient tool to counter the setting up of a “herd” and to cope with potential “herd” behavior.
In general, we will always listen to arguments when people disagree with us, and we will always take into account new evidence. This includes tailoring rules that are already in place in response to our own evaluations or to evidence from industry, broader civil society and other stakeholders. Page 6  This is what we did when we implemented an earlier Basel regulatory package known as CRR2. In that case, we implemented a new standard for banks’ long term funding after tailoring it to be more risk sensitive for activities that are important for the UK. That was a change we made in response to evidence-based arguments we received during the consultation. We are now taking the same approach to work on Solvency II rules for insurers. Debates between us and the Government have got a lot of public attention. But there are many areas where we fully agree about the benefits from simplifying the regime to better reflect the needs of the UK. And with the high-level policy decisions now clear, we are focused on implementation and on delivering detailed proposals for consultation. My colleague Sam Woods recently set out what we are committed to doing. [18] All of this will be on top of what we are already doing to remove unnecessary rules we inherited from our time in the EU. We have so far deleted 13 guidelines issued by EU regulators, five superseded Supervisory Statements and 26 technical standards onshored from the EU. This work will continue.