Archegos Blowup Prompts Regulatory Questions at Basel Committee

(Bloomberg) -- Global banking regulators will discuss the collapse of Archegos Capital Management LP, whose failure threatens to cost its lenders some $10 billion and is prompting calls for more oversight of the industry.

Carolyn Rogers, secretary general of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, said the blowup of Bill Hwang’s family office last month has already highlighted holes in banks’ understanding of complex trades.

“Disclosure was an issue,” Rogers said in an interview this week. The banks involved, which included Nomura Holdings Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG, couldn’t “get a full picture of the complete exposure this client had,” she said.

Rogers said that while it’s too early to lay out a specific regulatory response, the Basel Committee will probably intensify scrutiny of structured financial products and total return swaps. The committee, whose members include the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, has been looking into the products in recent years.

“A case like this with losses of this magnitude at multiple global banks, all traced back to a single client or a single transaction, will always be something that gets discussed at the Basel Committee table,” Rogers said.

A Glossary to Understand the Collapse of Archegos: QuickTake

The committee’s work comes as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission faces pressure to examines rules meant to ensure all traders are transparent about their use of swaps. Data standards introduced by the Dodd-Frank Act are still not fully implemented more than a decade later.

Rogers, who has been secretary general since 2019, also said:

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