Germany plans to host G-20 finance ministers meet

Germany plans to host a meeting of finance ministers of 19 major industrialised and developing nations ahead of the upcoming G-20 Summit in June on regulating financial markets in future.

Welcoming Obama's financial sector reform proposals, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble yesterday said he plans to convene a meeting of the G-20 finance ministers in Berlin ahead of the G-20 summit in Canada in June.

The meeting will discuss, among other things, how to involve the finance sector in adequately sharing the costs of the present and future crisis, Schaeuble said in a newspaper interview.

Earlier, the German government said in its initial reaction that the US President Barack Obama's proposals to bar US banks from risky investments and to prevent them from becoming "too big to fail" were quite encouraging for the current efforts to reform global financial markets.

The President's proposals are a "helpful encouragement for further discussions on  international level," a finance ministry spokesman said in Berlin.

The German government continues to strive for globally- agreed solutions rather than individual nations taking their own steps. Therefore, the German government is planning to draw up its own proposals on reforming the financial markets and to present them to the G-20 nations at the summit in June, the spokesman said.