supervisors this October at the Princess Hotel.

The first is the 16th Annual Meeting of the Offshore Group of Banking Supervisors on October 23 and 24 that is organised by the Authority and sponsored by the Island's banks.

A group of 19 countries, covering offshore centres, will be represented. They meet to discuss matters of mutual interest, but also at times, they meet with the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision worldwide.

Such a meeting will be the nature of the second conference at the Princess which convenes the day after the first ends.

The Offshore Group first met in 1980 and is designed to allow offshore centres to define their common ground more exactly. They are also designed to identify the extent to which the exchange of information with other supervisory authorities could be compatible with their general function as offshore refuges from the fiscal and monetary policies of other countries.

The group also seeks to develop a positive, constructive and coordinated response to the approaches of other banking supervisory authorities.

The essential elements of banking regulation in each offshore centre forming the Offshore Group are conditions of membership, which require that: there is effective supervision through effective legislation; there is an applied commitment to the principles of effective banking supervision as embodied in the Basle Committee's Concordat, its supplement and the committee's minimum standards paper; and, that the necessary administration is in place to effect the commitment.

Group members are also committed to the implementation of the Basle Committee's Capital Accord and in almost all cases have set, and are achieving, more rigorous risk asset ratio requirements than the eight percent minimum set by the Basle Committee.

The Offshore Group has no enforcement powers over its members, but like the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, they seek to promote the effective supervision of banks on the peer group principle.

Standards are also set by the conditions of membership.

The second meeting is the Joint Working Party of the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision and the Offshore Group of Banking Supervisors.

The Basle Committee on Banking Supervision was established in 1974 by the central bank governors of the Group of Ten industrialised countries with the objective of strengthening collaboration among national authorities in their prudential supervision of international banking. The committee meets four times a year at the Bank of International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland.

The committee is comprised of senior officials of the central banks and supervisory agencies of the Group of Ten countries and Luxembourg.

The committee's reports and recommendations for supervisory policies and procedures are not legally binding. But through discussion of supervisory issues, the committee seeks to reach consensus on best practices.

Those best practices are embodied in the Basle Concordat, first drawn up in 1975 and extended in 1983.

The Basle Committee has considerably extended its work in the last decade to keep abreast of major developments in banking, especially the progressive internationalisation of banking.

The purpose of the Working Party is to discuss the experience in applying the four Basle Committee Minimum Standards. They include that all international banking groups and international banks be supervised by a capable home country authority; that host and home country supervisory authorities should first give consent to the creation of cross-border banking establishments; that supervisors should have the right to gather information from their home banks in such relationships; and, that if a host country supervisor believes that minimum standards have not been met, that authority could impose necessarily deemed restrictive measures.

The Working Party will also advise on whether it is desirable to agree on certain additional points concerning their application.