Introduction

As Co-Chairmen of last year's Windsor meeting, we were asked by The Technical Committee of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions ("IOSCO") at its meeting in Rome on 6 March 1996 to report on progress in carrying forward the work program proposed in the Windsor Declaration of 17 May 1995.

We welcome this opportunity one year after Windsor to present our evaluation of the effect of the discussions held and agreements reached there, and to assess the outcome of the work subsequently undertaken in response to the Windsor Declaration's recommendations. We believe that Windsor was an important milestone in the development of international regulatory cooperation and understanding. In giving significant impetus to existing work, as well as in launching new initiatives, it materially assisted the process of improving the monitoring and control of risk, and thereby helped to increase the safety of the international futures markets.

In retrospect, we can view with satisfaction the fact that useful developments have occurred that might otherwise not have taken place. And we can be gratified by the degree to which the pragmatic and flexible approach to cooperative endeavor displayed at Windsor has become incorporated into our collective work in the regulatory community. With the agreed post-Windsor agenda largely completed, or taken up as part of ongoing self-sustaining work programs in IOSCO and other fore, this will be our final report on its implementation. But the spirit of Windsor lives on, and the change in regulatory culture to which it has given rise has now become part of our way of working together, to the benefit of all.

Perhaps this change has been most graphically illustrated in the recent events connected with volatility in the copper markets and disclosures related to Sumitomo Corporation. The Securities and Investments Board ("SIB") and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ("CFTC") had been cooperating for many months in connection with an investigation into a number of issues related to the copper markets. But Sumitomo's notice to our agencies on June 13 of its intent to announce publicly later that day the discovery of a nearly US $2 billion loss on copper trading resulted in our agencies moving quickly to put into effect pragmatic emergency cooperation procedures of the kind agreed at Windsor. This helped calm the markets, allowed us to assess the potential for solvency risk, and contributed to bringing the market situation under control.

The effect of this action has been strongly positive. It has been achieved because we have been able to work quickly, closely and successfully together in a manner that might not have occurred had the Windsor expression of concern and commitment to make a change for the better not had real force. We have in the process been able to activate the new large exposure information sharing arrangement which we as Windsor Co-Chairs initiated, the Declaration on Cooperation and Supervision of International Futures Exchanges and Clearing Organizations ("Declaration"),and which was signed by 1 4--now 15-- jurisdictions at Boca Raton in Florida in March of this year. This has enhanced our ability to address the effects on markets and firms subject to our respective jurisdictions of the copper trading activities of Sumitomo Corporation.