Bankerspeak: behind-the-scenes chatter at the recent International Monetary Conference.

• Author: Engelen, Klaus C.
• Position: Letter From Berlin

It is time we catch up with the International Monetary Conference (IMC). It brings together the chief executives of the largest financial institutions. Until two years ago, we used to listen in to the exclusive gathering of the world's top bankers to get some inside scoops on the hottest topics of the time. In particular, we learned what the CEOs talk about when meeting the world's most important central bank governors, financial supervisors, and heads of the major multilateral institutions.

For those who are not familiar with the IMC, it was established as an international arm of the American Bankers Association in the early 1950s to act as host for a conference of the principal officials of the large American and foreign banks. Its spiritual director was Herbert V. Prochnow, Chicago's banking legend. For decades the chief executives of the world's hundred largest banks from the private sector could use the IMC to get acquainted, exchange views with their peers, and listen to central bank governors and other financial officials.

This year's IMC meeting at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin--under the presidency of Jacob Wallenberg, chairman of the board of Sweden's SEB--says a lot about the dramatic changes and upheavals in the world of global banking. To use the time of the top executives in global banking most efficiently, the IMC was followed, on June 4-5, by the spring meeting of the IMC's sister organization, the Institute of International Finance (IIF), at the same location.

Created in 1983 in response to the international debt crisis, the IIF prides itself on being "the world's only global association of financial institutions" according to Charles H. Dallara, its managing director since 1993. "The IIF has evolved to meet the changing needs of the financial community, and its members include most of world's largest commercial banks and investment banks, as well as a growing number of insurance companies and investment management firms, in all 320 members headquartered in more than 60 countries."

What Dallara, the former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, doesn't say: their rival, the half-century-old IMC, has lost much of its international relevance because most major financial institutions of the world have put their eggs into the IIF basket. This way the IIF has become the most powerful lobbying platform to protect the business interests of the "global players" in a world of evermore expanding private capital flows.

Looking at the...