On 11 October 2010 the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project held a workshop on “Regional and global liquidity arrangements” at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC. Regional and bilateral liquidity arrangements have gained increasing prominence over the past decades, not least during the recent global financial crisis. This has important consequences for the role of the International Monetary Fund as a crisis lender and raises questions regarding the relationship between these arrangements and Fund lending. The Korean government is currently working with the IMF to develop an effective international financial safety net to be discussed at the G-20 summit in Seoul in November 2010. Plans for the safety net include proposals to broaden contingent financing that countries could draw on in case of trouble, and a global stabilisation mechanism that could create swap arrangements between regional mechanisms. Against this backdrop, this workshop brought together scholars and practitioners to discuss the relationship between regional arrangements and the Fund.