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The chief executive officers of Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG, UniCredit SpA, Prudential Plc and dozens of their peers emerged from a closed-door meeting with policy makers in Davos today saying the group has forged common ground.

Regulators and banks “have come a long way” in their dialogue over rules and monetary policy, Barclays Plc CEO Robert Diamond said in an interview after the gathering, which included European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and U.S. House Financial Services Committee member Barney Frank. “Banks are safer, the financial system is safer, we appreciate what the regulators and central bankers have done.”

The meeting followed a private session the bankers convened Thursday at the Swiss ski resort, where they weighed industry concerns ranging from regulation to sovereign-debt risk before sitting down for a discussion with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

While the bank participants publicly hewed to a message of gratitude toward policymakers for stanching the global credit crisis, tensions flared into view a few times during this year’s World Economic Forum.

After Diamond noted the industry’s “very heartfelt thanks” at a separate panel discussion today, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde replied by calling for more deeds in addition to words.

“The best way to say thank you is to start lending, keep compensation reasonable and improve your capital levels,” Lagarde said.

‘Moral Values’ French President Nicolas Sarkozy and JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon sparred over financial regulation earlier in the week, after the U.S. bank chief said he was concerned that “bad policies” could impede economic recovery.

“Don’t be accusatory of us,” Sarkozy replied. “There is no market economy without a minimum level of moral values.”

The financiers struck a more conciliatory note today, after the two-hour private meeting with regulators including Israel central bank governor Stanley Fisher and European Union Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.

“We agreed that a lot of things need to be done to make banks safer such as better capital, liquidity ratios and more strict regulation,” Federico Ghizzoni, CEO of Milan-based UniCredit, Italy’s biggest bank, told reporters after the meeting. “We think the impact overall is manageable.”

Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said the regulators themselves have found common ground in the wake of the financial crisis.

Private Dialogue Before the U.S. subprime mortgage market began to implode in 2007, “there was a mood that we all wanted to competitively deregulate so we could attract industry,” Frank said today in an interview. “That’s now gone. There’s now a recognition that we need to regulate and we need to regulate the same things.”

Tidjane Thiam, CEO of London-based insurer Prudential, said the private gathering, which he co-chaired with Diamond, allows the participants a measure of freedom to speak frankly.

“It’s a very useful meeting because it’s the only place where we can actually have reasonable dialogue between the companies, the regulators, in the same room,” Thiam said. “We are just working together to make sure that we have a stronger system and a more resilient system.”