The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system. It was established after the G20 London summit in April 2009 as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF). The Board includes all G20 major economies, FSF members, and the European Commission. Hosted and funded by the Bank for International Settlements, the board is based in Basel, Switzerland, and is established as a not-for-profit association under Swiss law.
The FSB represented the G20 leaders' first major international institutional innovation. U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has described it as "in effect, a fourth pillar" of the architecture of global economic governance, alongside the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.
Unlike some other multilateral financial institutions, the FSB lacks a treaty basis and formal power, and relies instead on an informal and nonbinding memorandum of understanding for cooperation adopted by its members.
Financial Stability Forum
The FSB's predecessor organization, the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), had emerged from a group of finance ministries, central bankers, and international financial bodies, which had been founded in 1999 to promote international financial stability by the finance ministers and central bank governors of G7 countries. The FSF facilitated discussion and cooperation on supervision and surveillance of financial institutions, transactions, and events. FSF was managed by a small secretariat housed at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
The FSF membership included about a dozen nations who participate through their central banks, financial ministries and departments, and securities regulators, including: the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and several other industrialized economies as well as several international economic organizations.