No institution too big to fail

The chairman and chief executive of one of the world’s largest institutions, Bank of New York Mellon, Bob Kelly, has declared that no institution should be regarded as being too big to fail.

Kelly made the comments as part of a speech in the US overnight during which he outlined a series of steps designed to reduce the risk of another major financial crisis.

Kelly’s speech is important because he chairs a number of committees tasked with reforming the US financial supervisory framework, and he is arguing that whatever occurs in the US should not be allowed to occur in a global vacuum.

He is urging the implementation of standards with respect to capital and liquidity requirements, the creation of an orderly wind-down process for all financial firms deemed “systemically important” and a fix-up for the US residential mortgage system — including deciding whether the US Government should remain in the business.

“It is critical that US reforms not be created in a vacuum,” Kelly said. “The financial crisis has highlighted how highly interconnected the global financial marketplace has become.”

He said that the stability of the system called out for truly global standards for both regulation and accounting, which would also help ensure that US financial companies were competing on a level playing field with the rest of the world.