As you know, many individuals inside our member agencies devoted substantial efforts to the Basel II process. We are indebted particularly to the leadership of Bill McDonough, our prior chairman and the former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who championed this new approach to capital supervision. We appreciate as well the leadership and excellent work of Danièle Nouy, the former Secretary General of the Committee’s highly professional Secretariat, and that of her successor, Ryozo Himino. Given that the capital framework serves as a cornerstone to the safe and sound operation of the banking system, we sought to conduct our discussions in a highly transparent process. We engaged in extensive discussions with many interested parties on the domestic and international levels, and I would like to thank in particular two groups of external organisations and individuals who supported our efforts. First, I should mention the countless representatives of banking organisations, industry associations, and other private sector bodies who devoted time and energy to sharing their views. They offered hundreds of comment letters, as well as data to test the quality of the rules, and they engaged in exhaustive hours of discussion with the Committee, its working groups and member authorities. Above all, banks and other private sector bodies helped us to ensure that supervision would be more closely aligned to sound industry practices.
The responses revealed a strong support from market participants, mainly because of its potential contribution to increasing transparency, which is seen as an essential ingredient for more informed risk assessments and to restore weakened confidence in ABS markets. In addition, respondents  4  BIS Review 84/2010  issued a number of recommendations to the Eurosystem regarding specific implementation aspects that should contribute to a smoother introduction of the loan by loan level data. From a timing perspective, the Governing Council of the ECB will assess during the autumn the results of the final technical preparatory phase that has already started, also taking into account the recommendations put forward during the public consultation, before deciding whether to proceed with the final phase of the introduction of ABS loan by loan data requirements. This decision is envisaged to take place during the fall 2010. In case it is decided to proceed, a twelve-month phasing-in period – in line with the feedback received in the public consultation – would be sufficient for originators and issuers to adapt their systems to provide the required data. It should be noted that the Eurosystem’s initiative on loan level data is in line with certain amendments introduced by the Second Capital Requirements Directive (“CRD II”) that will enter into effect on 1 January 2011. Amongst other things, CRD II provides that the sponsor or the originator must ensure that investors and prospective investors have readily available access to all materially relevant data on credit quality and performance of the individual underlying exposures.