Banks around the world are underestimating the regulatory requirements that will be imposed on financial firms, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Chief Executive Officer Gerald McCaughey said.

“I think that people are underestimating globally how far the regulators are going to go over time in terms of the requirements,” McCaughey said today at a financial-services conference in Toronto hosted by Bank of Nova Scotia. (BNS) “Globally, you will see a continued series of increases in requirements, whether or not it’s from a viewpoint of leverage ratio or Tier 1 common equity.”

McCaughey said it would be “difficult to believe” that Canada wouldn’t eventually be affected by capital levels in the U.S.

To contact the reporter on this story: Doug Alexander in Toronto at dalexander3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net; David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net