Big European banks may be required to raise billions of euros in new capital, making them less risky but potentially putting them at a disadvantage to their American rivals, under guidelines issued yesterday by an organization that coordinates global bank regulation, New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which includes regulators from the United States, Europe, Japan and other major economies, issued a revised proposal yesterday on how banks should calculate their leverage ratios. If put into force, the new rules would probably fall hardest on large European institutions like Deutsche Bank and Barclays, which tend to use a high proportion of borrowed money to do business or have large portfolios of derivatives. American banks have faced controls on leverage for decades, while most European banks have not.
