* [Reproduced from the text provided to International Legal Materials by the Bank for International Settlements. The Introductory Note to the Basle Committee Paper on Proposals For international Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards was prepared for International Legal Materials by Cynthia C. Lichtenstein, Professor, Boston College Law School and Consultant, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. Once again thanks are due to Andrew Spindler of the New York Reserve Bank for his most helpful cooperation in making shorter BIS documents easily available to scholars in the United States].

1/ Dale,Richard, The Regulation of International Banking,(1986),page171.

2/ Ibid.,page 172.

3/ See footnote 9 to the Introductory Note to the 1986 paper, 25 I.L.M.981(1986) for the citations in the Federal Register of the proposals.

4/ Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Federal Reserve Board Joint News Release, January 8,1987, reprinted in Fed. Banking L.Rep.(CCH) Paragraph 86,776 (January 16,1987).

5/ This proposal was published for comment by the Federal Reserve Board on February 19, 1987 at 52 Fed. Reg.5135 through 5139. The proposed revised capital adequacy regulation that the Federal Reserve issued to implement the Agreed Proposal is published at 52 Fed.Reg.5119 et seq.(1987); the Comptroller of the Currency's proposed “ guidelines” at 52 Fed. Reg.23045 et seq.(1987);and FDIC's at 52 Fed. Reg.11476 et seq.(1987).For a student note discussing the Agreed Proposal and its provisions, particularly the ways in which the United States and the United Kingdom agreed to disagree and not harmonize the standards, see Mintz, , “International Banking:United States-United Kingdom Capital Adequacy Agreement”, 28 Harv.Int' l L.J. 499 (1987)Google Scholar. On March 4,1987,the two central banks announced a proposal for co-ordinating the method of integrating international banks’ swaps business into the joint capital adequacy scheme. This latter proposal, entitled “Agreed Proposal;Credit Equivalent Amounts for Interest Rate and Foreign Exchange Rate Related Instruments” was published by the Federal Reserve at 52 Fed. Reg.9310(1987)and the Federal Reserve's proposed changes in its capital adequacy Guidelines to accomodate this secondary Agreed Proposal appear at 52 Fed.Reg.9304 et seq.(1987). See Kerr, “ U.K./U.S.proposal on swap capital requirements”, Int'l Financial L.R. May 1987 at 19 for sophisticated discussion.

6/ Description of Discussion Item #1 in the Federal Reserve Board's Open Meeting Agenda for Wednesday,January 27,1988,at which the Basle Agreement on Convergence and U.S.implementation there of was discussed.

7/ See note 5,above.

8/ Or,as the Open Meeting Agenda cited in note 6 above puts it,“““The U.S.banking agencies deferred final action on the U.S./U.K.proposal in order to participate in the development of a more broadly based capital framework that would be applicable to international banking organizations from the major industrial countries.“

9/ The Federal Reserve's implementing regulation is expected to be published in the Federal Register by the end of March.

10/ See the 1986 Basle Supervisors’ Committee paper,25 I.L.M.979 TT986).