It has now been 41 business days since Basel II was implemented in Australia. I am sure there was a sigh of relief from industry (and certainly from APRA) when the 1 January 2008 milestone was reached. So much effort - both by the industry and APRA - has gone into achieving what has been accomplished to date. It is still only a milestone, however, as apart from the fact that Basel II will continue to evolve, especially in its more advanced guises, there remain a small number of outstanding issues that must be addressed over the next couple of years. I will come back to these outstanding issues later but I would first like to offer some comments on Basel II in the context of current global financial market conditions.

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