In an interview the Governor of the Bank of Spain, Jaime Caruana, said there is a unanimous understanding of the need for Basel II. .It is a completely new approach and in that sense you could say that it is a kind of revolution. He defended the accord, saying the U.S. decision to apply the new rules to only the top 10 banks - instead of all banks as Europe intends - met the spirit of the accord because U.S. banks already met high regulatory capital standards.

Reuters interview with Mr Jaime