tool in furthering the cause of a level playing field between countries and across institutions. ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude. looking back in history, we are a far cry now from where we were fifty years ago, when our predecessors introduced formal banking supervision in the netherlands. looking forward into the future, i am pretty sure that our successors will not be celebrating the centenary of the act on the supervision of credit systems, or even the centenary of insurance supervision 20 years from now. we will have entered a cross sectoral world long before then! and as to the topic they will be discussing, that could well depend on the turning we take on the crossroads that we are at now. thank you for your attention. i wish you all an interesting and entertaining conference.

nout wellink : 50th anniversary of the dutch act on the supervision of credit systems opening remarks by mr nout wellink, president of de nederlandsche bank and president of the bank for international settlements, at the conference on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the dutch act on the supervision of credit systems, amsterdam, 24 april 2002. * * * it is a great privilege to welcome you here in amsterdam at the conference ‘ banking supervision at the crossroads ’. this conference has been organised to celebrate the adoption of the act on the supervision of the credit system in the netherlands 50 years ago. that was when banking supervision in our country was first formalised. it replaced a system of voluntary arrangements between de nederlandsche bank and the private banks. in my opening remarks today, i will look back at the past half century, that has taken us from informal gentlemen ’ s agreements to the phenomenal complexity of basel ii. we still aim for agreement and most of the time try to behave like gentlemen, but the world has become a different place. and it will continue to change rapidly! the question we are faced with is how supervisory practices should respond and in particular - and that is the theme of the conference - to what extent they should converge. i am very happy that we have a number of prominent speakers that are willing to shed light on this important question. first of all, i must inform the audience that due to unforeseen obligations in parliament, minister gerrit zalm will unfortunately not be able to join us this afternoon. however we are happy that in his place mr kees van dijkhuizen is willing to deliver the keynote speech this afternoon. as the highest civil servant at the ministry of finance, mr. van dijkhuizen takes a keen interest in financial supervision in this country. we furthermore are very honoured to have in our midst mr william mcdonough, president of the federal reserve bank of new york and chairman and of the basel committee on banking supervision, mr jochen sanio, chairman of the new federal office for the supervision of financial services in germany and mr tom de swaan, chief financial officer of abn amro. as mentioned, the dutch act on the supervision of credit systems formalised the supervisory task of de nederlandsche bank. it was a response to the major changes in the financial and economic environment that took place between the two world wars. the banking crises of the nineteen twenties, the glass steagall act in