IMF Urges Bank Regulators to Extend Curbs on Dividends, Buybacks
- Limits help protect financial system in a slow recovery: IMF
- ‘When you retain earnings as capital, they’re not lost’
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Regulators should extend limits on banks’ capital distributions to help protect the financial system in case the global economic recovery proves slow, the International Monetary Fund said, a recommendation that comes just as some large lenders are itching to resume repurchasing stock and paying dividends.
Bank regulators should also act faster to roll back temporary relief measures that undermine the reliability of financial statements, or tweak global capital rules, even as other measures supporting the financial system remain in place, the IMF said in a new section of its semi-annual Global Financial Stability Report, released Friday.