Closing remarks by Akihiko Yamamoto
Senior Vice Minister of State for Financial Services, Government of Japan
at the IOSCO Technical Committee Conference
Tokyo, November 9, 2007

First of all, I would like to say thank you to everyone for your hard work over the two days of this conference.

This IOSCO Technical Committee Conference was held with the theme of "Market Regulation-Competition, Convergence and Cooperation." I suspect that vigorous discussions from a variety of perspectives took place on a wide range of issues, including convergence in the area of accounting and auditing, competition and consolidation of exchanges, approaches to supervision of financial conglomerates, the need for cross-border cooperation among regulatory authorities, and the feasibility of regulatory frameworks for alternative investments.

Furthermore, I hope the conference went beyond discussions on the future direction of market regulation from medium-term perspectives, and put the spotlight on current initiatives in response to the recent market turmoil to discuss issues based on recent trends.

The various problems of the financial markets cannot be solved overnight. It is necessary to verify the effects of various policies, and at the same time to advance tireless efforts to solve the problems that take into account changes in financial and economic conditions and the needs of market participants. World financial markets are becoming more integrated. For the authorities in each country operating within the structure of sovereign states, their response to globalization will surely continue to be one of the most important issues for the foreseeable future. The importance of representatives of the public and private sectors from all around the world getting together to seek cooperation, like you have done in this conference, will continue to grow in the future and will definitely not decline.

I hope that this conference has provided a forum not only for discussions about the various efforts being made with respect to the financial markets, but also for the building of a human network among all of the participants. If it has done so, I think we can say that this conference has been extremely successful from the perspective of strengthening cross-border public and private sector cooperative relationships.

I hope that this conference in Tokyo has been beneficial for all of the participants. Moreover, I look forward to further progress in these discussions at the Annual Conference of IOSCO to be held in Paris in May next year. Finally, let me wish you all even more success in the future.

Thank you.