ABSTRACT
This chapter retraces the history of central-bank discussions on banking supervision and regulation in the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) context. It focuses on the archival sources for the study of international banking supervision from the 1960s onward. These sources can shed an interesting light on how the thinking of central banks and other relevant players on international financial stability and lender-of-last-resort issues has evolved over the past half century, and how this evolution has been driven by recurrent banking and financial crises. An annual meeting of euro-currency market experts soon became a regular fixture on the BIS meeting agenda, and, starting in 1964, the BIS Annual Report contained a special chapter devoted to developments in the euro-currency market. The most significant players in the history of international banking supervision include national supervisory authorities, the central banks and their cooperative body the Bank for International Settlements, the main commercial banks, national governments, and international political bodies.
