Asia c.banks to meet in Bangkok amid market turmoil

BANGKOK, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Asian central bank governors and officials will gather in Thailand this weekend for a regular meeting that comes amid an upheaval on Wall Street that has battered Asian markets.

The Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand (SEANZA) Governors' Symposium on Sept. 19-21 in Bangkok was scheduled before the turmoil in the U.S. banking system triggered panic selling on world stock markets.

"The meeting will go ahead but we are not sure who will be attending. We will know tomorrow," a Bank of Thailand official said.

The 20-member group includes the central banks of Japan, China, Australia, India and several South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.

Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Kiyohiko Nishimura, who will attend the Bangkok meeting, said on Thursday that tensions in global financial markets had increased but he did not expect the turmoil to seriously affect Japan's financial system.

"Even considering the effect of the failure of major (U.S.) investment banks, I don't expect it to seriously affect the stability of Japan's overall financial system," Nishimura said in a speech to securities brokers in Tokyo.

In Manila, the Asian Development Bank urged the region's regulators and central banks to coordinate action to preserve stability, warning the turmoil roiling top-flight banks in the West could still hit big Asian lenders. "Even if subprime-related losses have to date been lower than elsewhere, this is no guarantee recent events will not affect major Asian financial institutions," ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said in a speech.

Fears of mounting credit losses have hit world stock markets this week and forced the most dramatic transformation in the U.S. banking landscape since the Great Depression.

The collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers and the $85 billion U.S. government bail-out of insurer AIG (AIG.N) this week have knocked Asian banking stocks and prompted central banks to pump funds into strained money markets.

Commercial lenders in Asia have seen their shares caught up in the downdraft, but they have largely dodged the huge credit losses that have rocked Wall Street.

While the region has ample liquidity, Kuroda warned that several asset markets, particularly real estate, were vulnerable to shocks and that big differences in the development of financial systems among Asian economies were a cause for concern. (Reporting by Orathai Sriring; Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Alan Raybould)