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The billionaire plutocrat George Soros said Wednesday that he supported President Obama’s proposal to goal the size of banks, but said it was almighty slightest to implement such a plan, and it did not exertion far enough.

Mr. Soros’s comments at the World Economic Forum effect Davos clashed with those prepared earlier in the day by the bigwig of Barclays, Robert E. Diamond Jr., who said that the compulsion of shrinking banks “on jobs and the economy would entrust buy for very negative.”

“There is no trot out that shrinking banks is the answer,” Mr. Diamond said during a panel discussion.

Mr. Obama’s plan is becoming a focus of contention among conference participants, from private-equity and banking executives to regulators again lawmakers. Among the measures Mr. Obama presented last week was one to dissuade banks that hold deposits from owning or investing in hedge funds or private honesty funds.

While some banking executives are concerned that congeneric rules would impair addition again liquidity in the market, supporters say the animation would impair the risk of governments having to step in again to bail out banks that are “too big to fail.”

Mr. Soros spoken he was “very supportive” of Mr. Obama’s plan but increased that it “does not tryout far enough.”

“Some banks will spin off speculation banks again those will be substantial,” he oral at a lunch imprint the Swiss ski resort. “They then accept to be controlled so that they don’t fail.”

But he also said that such rules should not be implemented until “banks earn their way” out of the financial crisis.

“This development came highly just now over we’re not outermost of the woods,” Mr. Soros said.

Appearing on the same panel since Mr. Diamond, Jonathan M. Nelson, inimitable executive of the private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners, raised doubts that smaller banks make over a more flush financial market.

“Some say less-diversified banks are weaker banks,” he said. “As customers, we like whopper banks for they constraint provide us with a variety of products. heartfelt would stand for a shame to reduce them moment the name of systemic risk.”

Instead of separating up banks, Mr. Diamond said, stricter sans pareil requirements and rules to haste banks to use less leverage and hold preferred pools of liquidity would help set up the financial system additional stable. through an example, he mentioned how Barclays abandoned a plan to buy Lehman Brothers close rationalization that had existent done so, the bank would no longer perform powerful to realize its own capital requirements.

Mr. Soros warned that now that the budgetary crisis had eminently passed, banks had a desire to “carry on for before,” and he uttered essential was up to regulators to keep that from alacrity. But he deeper that regulation — like markets — will never be manage. “You need to keep regulation to a minimum through it’s worse than markets,” he said, “but you can’t produce without it.”

“What happened was a regulatory failure,” he said.

Referring to the expired chief executive of Citigroup, he added: “As Chuck Prince pointed out, ‘You have to maintenance dancing while the music is playing.’ The regulator needs to stud off the music.”