Lagos — Leaders of the 20-industrialised nations (the G-20) at the weekend called for immediate restoration of confidence of consumers and institutions as a way of resolving the lingering global financial crisis.

British Chancellor, Alistar Darling, who addressed a news conference at the end of the meeting said the finance ministers and central bank governors agreed that restoring confidence would promote better regulation of financial institutions, including hedge funds.

The group, representing 20 industrialised and developing economies, convened Friday to lay the groundwork for next week's European Council meeting and the April 2 G-20 summit in London.

Earlier, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Saturday for fiscal co-operation among countries -- especially in the area of regulation -- to help prevent future economic crises.

"Regulators in one country must cooperate more closely in another country to create a global network of supervision," Brown said at a news conference with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Brown said the G-20 meetings -- plus the gathering of European leaders last month in Berlin -- share the same agenda: to put economies on a path toward growth, create jobs and help businesses and families weather the current global financial downturn.

Leaders at the Berlin meeting concluded that the world needs a "global New Deal" to haul it out of the economic crisis.

"Chancellor Merkel and I agreed that a central challenge for the summit will be to go to the root cause of the current crisis -- and that is the need to reshape our banking and financial supervision and regulation across the world," Brown said.

"We have to address the fact that a bad bank in one country can undermine good banks in every country, and that multibillion-dollar markets still exist outside the supervisory net," he added.

"So we must bring the shadow banking system -- and that means hedge funds -- into the regulatory system," Brown said. "We call on all countries to adopt international standards and sign bilateral agreements to exchange tax information with other countries."

Merkel emphasised the importance of addressing the problem of climate change.

"As regards to the financial crisis, as regards to the climate issue, that again is a very clear testimony that countries going it alone will not be able to solve problems of this magnitude," Merkel said.

"We are just as resolved to see to it that the climate change talks come to a successful conclusion by the end of this year," she added.

The G-20 summit next month was initially going to focus on financial markets and regulation, but the deepening crisis around the world necessitated the need for a broader economic package that includes everything from stimulus packages to uneven interest rates, said Mark Malloch-Brown, the British prime minister's envoy to the summit.

Before talking to reporters, Brown stressed his friendship with Merkel and called her "a great friend of the United Kingdom."

He also expressed his country's sympathy over this week's shooting spree in Germany that included a rampage at a southwest German school.

Darling told the BBC earlier on Saturday that the world's leading economies must make an "explicit commitment" to use further fiscal stimulus measures to revive the ailing global economy.

But this stance could fuel a rift with Germany and France, whose leaders have suggested that regulatory reform was more important than boosting spending.

The president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, also warned them they needed to do much more to tackle the crisis.

Zoellick said restoring trust in the international -banking sector was more important than stimulating growth through tax cuts or spending increases.

"Stimulus packages alone are not enough," the World Bank president said, according to The Guardian newspaper.

"The International Monetary Fund research of some 122 financial and economic crises shows that turnaround can't happen unless you clean up the bad assets and recapitalise the banks."