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Related Documents Industry Document "Speech to G20 Finance Ministers" presented on 11/7/2009

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Nov. 7 called on the G-20 to consider enacting a global tax on financial transactions to help pay for the cost of banking crises in the future.

In a speech to G-20 finance ministers in Scotland, Brown said the group should discuss whether they should "go further in recognizing the social and economic responsibility of the financial system not least in mitigating the risks to the rest of society."

"I believe we should discuss whether we need a better economic and social contract to reflect the global responsibilities of financial institutions to society," Brown said, according to a transcript of the speech.

Such discussions, he said, could include "an insurance fee to reflect systemic risk or a resolution fund or contingent capital arrangements or a global financial transactions levy."

However, Brown stressed that the U.K. would not move forward on any such measures without global adoption.

"Britain will not move unless others move with us together," he said.

Further, Brown urged that any measures complement and reinforce other actions, be fair to financial institutions and be "nondistortionary" to avoid reductions in liquidity, inefficient allocation of capital and the "temptation of avoidance" at financial institutions.