◆Thirty Financial Groups on Systemic Risk List: FT

Thirty global financial institutions make up a list that regulators are earmarking for cross-border supervision exercises, the Financial Times has learnt, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

The list includes six insurance companies – Axa, Aegon, Allianz, Aviva, Zurich and Swiss Re – which sit alongside 24 banks from the UK, continental Europe, North America and Japan.

The list has been drawn up by regulators under the auspices of the Financial Stability Board, in an effort to preempt systemic risks from spreading around the world in any future financial crisis.

Insurers are considered systemically important for a variety of reasons: they might, for example, have a large lending arm, such as Aviva, or a complex financial engineering business, akin to that of Swiss Re.

AIG of the US, the failed insurance group, was proven to be a vast systemic risk last year, in large part because of its diversification from insurance into complex financial engineering.

Raj Singh, chief risk officer of Swiss Re, said: “The real interconnectivity for the insurance industry is more muffled in that there needs to be a dual trigger for there to be any big systemic effects.”

The list, which is not public, contains many of the multinational bank names that would be widely expected: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup of the US; Royal Bank of Canada; UK groups HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered; UBS and Credit Suisse of Switzerland; France’s Société Générale and BNP Paribas; Santander and BBVA from Spain; Japan’s Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui, Nomura, Mitsubishi UFJ; Italy’s UniCredit and Banca Intesa; Germany’s Deutsche Bank; and Dutch group ING.


◆France, Rwanda Restore Diplomatic Ties

France and Rwanda agreed to restore diplomatic relations after a three-year break Sunday, straight after the central African nation finally joined the Commonwealth bloc and moved into the Anglophone sphere.

Relations between France and the former Belgian colony had been soured by accusations and recriminations over the role each side played in the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 Rwandans.

The Tutsi-led government of President Paul Kagame had accused France of siding with the Hutus behind the massacres.

A French judge said Kagame and others had been involved in killing the former president -- the trigger for the slaughter, and a charge Rwanda strongly denies.

Claude Gueant, chief of staff at the French presidency, met Kagame Sunday in Kigali with a message from President Nicolas Sarkozy. The two countries agreed to resume ties and France said it was time to turn the page on the past.

"Rwanda has a big role to play in this region in development and security and it is also an example of good governance in the whole of Africa. For this reason, France has decided to support Rwanda," he said.

Rwanda has a major influence on the east of Democratic Republic of Congo, where ethnic militias have been battling for years, partly over control of mineral resources.


◆Four U.S. Police Officers Shot Dead

A gunman burst into a coffee shop in Washington state and opened fire on four police officers as they sat working on their laptops, killing the three men and one woman in what an official described as a targeted ambush.

Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said officers were looking for one male suspect who fled on foot, but have not ruled out an accomplice.

It was not clear whether the officers even had time to draw their weapons to return fire, Troyer said.

"This was more of an execution. Walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers," Troyer said.

Troyer said the officers - all from the Lakewood Police Department - were catching up on paperwork at the beginning of their shifts when they were attacked.

Troyer said the attack was clearly targeted at the officers.

"There were marked patrol cars outside and they were all in uniform," Troyer said.

With no known suspects, there was no indication of any connection with the Hallowe'en night shooting of a Seattle police officer. The suspect in that shooting remains in hospital.

"We won't know if it's a copycat effect or what it was until we get the case solved," Troyer said. "We don't even have a suspect ID right now."

Two employees and a few other customers were in the shop during the shooting. All are being interviewed by the Pierce County Sheriff's investigators.

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