An International Network of Regulators? Cross Border Relations of Financial Supervisory Agencies
How are national financial regulatory agencies interacting to supervise internationally active financial firms? The last financial crisis has shown that financial institutions are not only too big but also too connected to fail. For some time now, analyses of internationally active corporations and business associations have established the argument that private actors are well equipped to organize across borders. Studies of corporate interlocks among large firms or representations on policy planning boards argue that a transnational economic elite is emerging which influences policies at the national and international levels through lobbying, intellectual capture or direct influence. While network perspectives capture both individual characteristics of related persons as well as the structural dimensions of cross-border power structures, the focus often lies on private actors and their capacity to organize across borders. In contrast, relatively little is known about if and how national regulatory agencies link up to the outside world.
The paper addresses this issue by discussing patterns of cross-border cooperation of regulators since the financial crisis. In addition to supervisory colleges, essentially multilateral working groups of different supervisors involved in the supervision of internationally active financial entities, the focus will be on network relations of national regulators. In an exploratory network study, I aim to characterize national and international linkages of financial regulators since 2008. The analysis includes linkages between regulators and their links to the financial industry. The contribution of the paper lies in identifying patterns of how public oversight bodies engage with and link up their organizational environment.