It is really a great honor to have representatives from the central banks of the EU member states as well as from the candidate countries attending this conference, especially having in mind that on the last day of the conference some of them will have presentations and share their experiences in the domain of payment systems. Ladies and gentlemen, Now, allow me to declare the seventh conference on payment and securities settlement systems open! I would like to wish the chairman Mr. Michiel van Doeveren and his colleagues a successful conference. I hope the weather will be fine and you will enjoy the beauties of Lake Ohrid, and in the afternoon and in the evening, you will have the opportunity to visit the city of Ohrid, which is one of the best preserved material and spiritual legacies witnessing the millennial existence of our culture and historical heritage. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
Second, it can also provide perverse incentives for financial firms to grow bigger, more complex and more interconnected simply to secure public support and finally take on more risks. To answer these concerns, the policy response has focused on the issue of ‘too- big- to- fail’ institutions. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has proposed that global systemic financial institutions should be better capitalized and be submitted to higher capital surcharges, proportional to their contribution to systemic risk. It has also recommended a tighter supervision of these institutions, notably by setting up Crisis management groups in charge of monitoring that these institutions develop appropriate resolution and recovery plans. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  It may be useful at this point to step back a little. The TBTF problem was not born with the crisis. The official recognition of a TBTF policy and the coinage of the term itself date back to 1984 during the testimony before Congress of the then US comptroller of the Currency on the government rescue of the bank Continental Illinois. Afterwards, a further 11 banks were identified as TBTF in an article in the Wall Street Journal. The fact that continental Illinois rescue led to a subsequent decrease in market discipline for these banks has been confirmed by several academic studies. The last crisis however gave rise to two important developments in the TBTF problem.