The agreement being drafted by global regulators is now under fire from banks who say it is convoluted, expensive, heavy-handed and poorly tested, and who now seek to stall or derail it. Not devoid of a dry sense of humour and with a shy smile, Caruana is known as a diligent and rigorous technocrat, a fan of teamwork who avoids showiness. “The core of the issue is whether Caruana will be able to demonstrate his leadership in the next couple of months,” said one committee member who works directly with Caruana, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. “It's not easy to guide such a group of self-confident people,” the committee member said. “He's just trying to fight his way.” Part of the problem is that Caruana's predecessor, New York Federal Reserve Chairman William McDonough, left large shoes to fill. McDonough's unexpected retirement in June left critics wondering whether his successor would be able to hold together a global project. “There were definitely advantages in having a superpower in charge of this committee,” said the Basel Committee member. Karel Lannoo, head of the Brussels-based think tank Center for European Policy Studies, said Caruana is a strong player with anti-establishment nuances who should be able to push through the  4  BIS Review 39/2003  accord and even impart some Spanish character to it. “Caruana is, in the Spanish context, very well regarded,” said Lannoo, a frequent adviser to the European Commission and a member of the academic European Shadow Regulatory Commission. “He was a broker.

Money and credit, the universal instruments of commerce, could not exist without this most fundamental of financial technologies, which allows debits and credits to be netted off; debt to circulate as currency; money to replace memory; and with it, trade to expand exponentially. How much have we progressed since Keynes’ bed-ridden globalisation? Replace “telephone” with a “tablet” and “tea” with a “soy latteccino” and you have not the start of the Twentieth Century but the Twenty First, a century in which opportunities are no longer limited to men or denizens of the City. Nonetheless, finance continues to be arranged around a series of hubs like brokers, clearing houses and exchanges; whereas, in other domains, people form connections directly, instantaneously and openly, and this is revolutionising how they consume, work, and communicate. The extent to which finance continues democratising and transforming depends on superficially arcane, but fundamentally vital, enabling technologies. The emergence of mobile telephony, the ubiquity of the internet, availability of high-speed computing, advances in cryptography, and innovations in machine learning could combine to enable rapid changes in finance – just as they have in other areas of the economy. The ledger, once stone, wood, or paper – and always centralised – is now digital and may become distributed. FinTech has the potential to deliver more resilient financial infrastructure, more effective trade and settlement, and new ways to encode, share and analyse data. For the financial sector, these could offer shorter, speedier transaction chains; greater capital efficiency; and stronger operational resilience.