June 16 (Bloomberg) -- The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China agreed to push for more clout in global financial institutions at an “historic” first summit, without announcing a common policy on how to flex their $2.8 trillion in reserves.

The heads of the so-called BRIC states called for emerging economies to have a “greater voice and representation in international financial institutions” and for a “more diversified” global monetary system. The comments were made in a joint statement released to reporters after the meeting today.

Before the meeting in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, Arkady Dvorkovich, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s top economic adviser, said the four leaders would discuss measures to promote regional currencies, including by investing part of their reserves in each other’s bonds, to lessen dependence on the dollar. The statement didn’t mention this possibility.

The BRIC summit, which Medvedev hailed as an “historic event,” comes after Brazil, China and Russia announced plans to shift some foreign reserves into International Monetary Fund bonds, driving Treasuries and the dollar lower. Investors watched the meeting for clues as to how the countries, which are among the biggest holders of U.S. Treasuries, will manage their reserves.

“This is not something for the immediate future, but rather a direction of movement,” Stanislav Ponomarenko, a fixed-income analyst at ING Groep NV in Moscow, said of Dvorkovich’s comments on BRIC bonds.

BRIC Bonds

“I don’t think more than a few percent of reserves could be reinvested into BRIC bonds,” Ponomarenko said. “What we’re seeing is a continuation of discussions to find an alternative to the dollar, yet nobody is going fundamentally to alter anything yet.”

The next BRIC summit will be held in Brazil in 2010, according to the statement issued by Medvedev, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Medvedev said the leaders had agreed to continue talks on reforming the global financial system. “We have instructed our finance ministers, our central bank chairmen and other interested structures to meet and prepare proposals to this end,” he told reporters after the summit.

Among such proposals, the leaders’ joint statement mentioned that the “heads and senior leadership” of international financial institutions “should be appointed through an open, transparent, and merit-based selection process.”

Supranational Currency

Medvedev hosted back-to-back summits of developing economies today as he seeks to carve out a bigger role for developing nations in the global financial system.

At a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes China and the four former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the Russian leader reiterated his intention to push for the creation of a “supranational currency” to challenge the dollar. He called on other Shanghai group members to use each other’s currencies for trade.

“There can be no successful global currency system if the financial instruments that are used are denominated in only one currency,” Medvedev said. “Today this is the case and the currency is the dollar.”

Chinese Pledge

Hu pledged $10 billion to help the Shanghai group’s Central Asian members weather the global recession, joining Russia in seeking greater influence in the region through aid. Medvedev in February said Russia would contribute $7.5 billion to a regional fund created by the Eurasian Economic Community, which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Today’s meetings “show a very strong desire of developing countries to play a bigger role in world finance, especially given the growing insecurity related to the current crisis,” said Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, in an interview with Bloomberg Television today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lyubov Pronina in Yekaterinburg at lpronina@bloomberg.net; Lucian Kim in Yekaterinburg at lkim3@bloomberg.netAlex Nicholson in Moscow at anicholson6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 16, 2009 13:05 EDT