Dutch bank president Nout Wellink told a closed-door meeting of banking supervisors in Singapore on Tuesday that banks must move to meet tough new rules on capital as soon as possible.

Wellink, who is also ECB governing council member and head of the Basel Committee, told the meeting regulators should stop banks from paying out dividends or bonuses if they fall short of the new minimum capital requirement, news agency ANP reports.
The new Basel III rules, announced earlier this month in a bid to prevent another global credit crisis, require banks to hold top-quality capital totaling 7% of their risk-bearing assets, more than triple what they do now.