When Asia-Pacific financial policymakers met in Brunei two weeks ago, ahead of the autumn meetings of the IMF and World Bank, top of their agenda was how to come up with measures to ensure regional financial stability and avoid the systemic failures that contributed to the financial crisis in 1998.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) forum examined initiatives on financial surveillance, bank reforms and capital flows. Noticeably absent from the discussion was large-scale institutional reform of the global financial structure.