Sarkozy, Brown push for overhaul of global financial system
Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown have struck up an unlikely partnership ahead of next week’s summit in Washington aimed at overhauling the global financial system.
The French President and the British Prime Minister want an agreement from the leaders of the G20 group of advanced and emerging economies in the United States (US) capital for a “new Bretton Woods”, a redesign of the post-war global financial architecture.
Brown and Sarkozy will seek European Union (EU) backing for their proposals at a special summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Friday.
The British do not expect the Washington summit to resolve all – or even most – of the issues, but to send out a signal of a commitment to act that will start to restore confidence in battered markets.
But there were still big differences between Paris and London about the lessons to draw from the crisis and a fear in the Elysée that Brown, the British Prime Minister, was still committed to preserving a light-touch regulatory regime for the City of London.
French officials said the strongest message that should come out of the Washington meeting on 15 November would be a broad commitment from the US, the UK and other European countries to abandon competition between regulatory systems in favour of convergence. But they acknowledged this is unlikely.
Officials on both sides of the English Channel said the two leaders had in fact put to one side their differences about the need for harmonisation of rules so that they can both claim success.
