Nearly two years after the onset of the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression, governments around the world sought both better regulation of financial institutions and greater global coordination among regulators to prevent a relapse. On November 4, 2009, fifty-one prominent men and women from international financial institutions, major accounting and law firms, academia, media, and research and policy institutions, gathered in New York City for a colloquium entitled "Governance of Financial Institutions" and issued a statement that called for stronger risk management, the need for turn-over and refreshment of boards of directors, and guidelines in fixing executive compensation policies.

The Institute of International Finance and the Hills Program on Governance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies co-sponsored with The American Assembly. Paul Volcker, then chairman of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, gave an address, as did Judge Richard Posner, U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.