Nearly 140 countries agreed on Friday to keep negotiating until mid-2021 on the first major rewriting of cross-border tax rules in a generation after talks got bogged down this year due to the coronavirus outbreak and U.S. reticence as the presidential election neared.

Kukies told a conference hosted by the Institute of International Finance that a global agreement was needed to avoid fragmentation across the world.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)