SARKOZY CLAIMS CREDIT OVER REGULATION PLANS

Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, yesterday claimed credit for “immense” progress towards tighter financial regulation at the G20 summit, saying the agreed reforms “turned the page” on a dominant model of Anglo-Saxon capitalism.

The French leader refused to wait for Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister and summit host, to conclude his closing press conference and rushed to tell the French media that his objectives had been met and even surpassed.

“To tell the truth, it is more than we could have imagined,” he said.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who joined her French counterpart on Wednesday in laying down demands for a regulatory clampdown, struck a more conciliatory note. The meeting had found “a very good, almost historic, compromise in a unique crisis,” Ms Merkel said. The outcome was a “victory for common sense”.

With the G20 agreeing to implement new rules on hedge funds, bank traders' pay, ratings agencies, bank capital requirements, securitisation, the blacklisting of tax havens and a review of accounting rules, both leaders can argue that their demands were largely met – although there will be long arguments over the detail in the months ahead.

The agreement to publish an OECD blacklist of tax havens within hours of the end of the summit was a last-minute bonus, officials said.

Mr Sarkozy argued yesterday that if he and Ms Merkel had not issued their utlimatums – backed up by the French president's apparent threat to walk away if not satisfied – their demands would not have been met “spontaneously”.

French officials privately admit this was pre-summit bluster because 95 per cent of the Franco-German demands had been met beforehand.

Nevertheless, Mr Sarkozy could expect congratulation on his return to France, with some French media outlets already commending his tactics.

Meanwhile, Ms Merkel's unusually pushy performance is likely to win her favour among German voters, many of whom are suspicious of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and who go to the polls in September in what is expected to be a tight race.