G20 finance leaders took aim at excessive bank pay and risk-taking at the root of the financial crisis and insisted trillions of dollars of emergency economic supports would be needed for some time.
Although the global economy looks brighter than when they met in April, their closing statement said they would not remove economic stimulus until the recovery was well entrenched.
While the timing of these eventual policy reversals may vary, the G20 said for the first time there should be some coordination to avoid adverse international fallout.
But as the focus shifted from crisis-fighting to establishing a safer financial system for the future, ministers searched for consensus on precise plans to rein in bankers' huge bonuses and use more of their profits to build buffers against any future crisis.
'We cannot put the world in a position where things go back to where they were at the peak of the boom,' US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said.
In a final statement, the G20 officials also said they would work with the International Monetary Fund and Financial Stability Board to develop cooperative and coordinated exit strategies.
Much of the public pressure before the meeting had centred on excessive bank remuneration, particularly for those who worked at banks receiving billions of dollars in public aid.
British prime minister Gordon Brown told the meeting in London that it was 'offensive to the public whose taxpayers' money in different ways has helped (keep) many banks from collapsing and is now underpinning their recovery'.
Mr Brown said the group of leading and emerging nations had to think not only about the immediate future but also about how to make the world economy safer for the long-term.
'Making the recovery sustainable does mean, in my view, avoiding unsustainable imbalances between countries,' he said.
'It makes sense for countries with large current account deficits to boost exports. It makes sense also for countries with large current account surpluses to increase the demand for goods and services from other countries.'
Today's meeting will lay the framework for a leaders' summit in the US city of Pittsburgh later this month.
The meeting coincides with new figures from the US, which show that the unemployment rate there has risen to 9.7% - the highest level for 26 years.
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the US economy has shed about 7m jobs.
Just under 15m people are now unemployed in the US.
