Europe welcomes Obama bank plan, won't imitate it

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Major European economies offered support on Friday for US President Barack Obama's plan to limit banks' size and trading activities but indicated they had no plans to follow suit.

Obama's dramatic proposals could rewrite the world financial order but experts said they were light on detail and could cloud the global approach fostered by the Group of 20 nations.

The European Union will not imitate Obama's plan, because it aims to reduce risk in the sector through other means, an EU source said on Friday.

"Look, we understand the US position and we understand his reasons. But I can't see the EU going down this route," the source, who is close to EU financial policymaking, told Reuters.

"The US finds itself a little behind us on this. The Obama plan is not fit for the purpose in the EU."

Obama made his proposals on Thursday, saying he was ready to fight resistance from Wall Street banks he blamed for helping cause the global financial crisis.

The plan would prevent banks from investing in, owning or sponsoring a hedge fund or private equity fund.

It would set a new limit on banks' size in relation to the overall financial sector and, perhaps most dramatically, could also bar institutions from proprietary trading operations, which are unrelated to serving customers, for their own profit.

Proprietary trading involves firms making bets on markets with their own money and has been the source of much of banks' bumper profits before and after the financial crisis.

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde welcomed the proposal, saying it was a "very, very good step forward".

UK Treasury Minister Paul Myners said Britain already had acted to address problems in its banking industry.

"He's developing a solution to what he sees as the American issues, we've already taken the necessary action in the UK," Myners said in an interview with Reuters Insider TV.

But Britain's opposition Conservatives, tipped by polls to win an election to be held by June, offered more solid support.

"President Obama has created a lot of space for the rest of the world to come up with what I think would be a sensible system of international rules," Conservative finance spokesman George Osborne told BBC Radio.

"I have said consistently that we should look at separating retail banking from activities like large-scale propriety trading and that this was best done internationally."