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 the board of directors, for clear and rigorous guidelines in fixing executive compensation policies, and for more uniform regulations and clearer expectations for financial-sector governance.