Ministers and bankers gathering in Istanbul this weekend for the IMF/G7 meetings are expected to discuss plans to co-ordinate the removal of blanket government guarantees of banks.

The guarantees, issued by most governments in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, are seen as unsustainable. However, no country wants to be first to remove them for fear of triggering a massive exodus of hot money. The Republic of Ireland caused a diplomatic row last year when it became the first country to guarantee wholesale as well as retail deposits, with many business customers rushing to switch money to Ireland from other countries, including Britain.

Reversing the policy for wholesale deposits is regarded as super-sensitive and needing international co-ordination if the guarantees are to be removed.

Regulators want to bring the possibility of failure back into bank supervision to encourage best practice. Some want lenders to write so-called “living wills” making it easier to close them down in the event of failure.

An internationally agreed tax on the world’s banks was put back on the agenda yesterday after Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, revealed that the organisation would be examining proposals.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, while rejecting calls for a conventional Tobin tax on banks’ foreign exchange trading, indicated that some kind of levy would be appropriate and that the Group of 20 nations was pushing the idea.

“Having special funding coming from the financial sector is something we’ll work on,” he told journalists in Istanbul, where the IMF is holding its annual meeting. The money raised could be used to finance deposit insurance or to provide funding for low-income countries, he said.

John Lipski, the IMF’s deputy managing director, said that the impetus for some kind of charge to compensate the world for the “damaging costs” of the financial crisis had come from the G20. “It’s a question asked by the G20 and we think it’s a very valid question,” he said.

In August, Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the British regulator, angered bankers when he suggested that some kind of Tobin tax might be appropriate. France and Germany are thought to be keenest for a charge.

A Tobin tax, first proposed by the economist James Tobin in the 1970s, was originally envisaged as a small charge on all foreign exchange transactions to try to curb the kind of speculation that could lead to destabilising swings in countries’ exchange rates.

Mr Strauss-Kahn emphasised that a Tobin tax, as originally envisaged, was impractical and simplistic, but he said it was only fair that the financial system should contribute in some way.

Mr Strauss-Kahn said that the wider global economy had turned a corner, but he was still very concerned about unemployment, which would carry on rising “for months and months”.

Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said it was important that the private sector started to spend more as the most intense volume of government fiscal and monetary stimulus measures started to be withdrawn after early 2010.

Mr Zoellick said that the World Bank would push ahead with plans to raise additional capital, which was pressing because demand for World Bank funding had already gone beyond the $100 billion earmarked for the next three years.

Explore Economics

• Pre-Budget Report 2008

• Budget 2009

• World Economic Forum

• The Times MPC

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive