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President Barack Obama is meeting with the leaders of top U.S. banks Friday, a session that will focus on the White House's drive to overhaul financial regulations and on thorny issues like executive compensation.

The meeting, which started at noon in the State Dining Room, comes days before Obama leaves for the Group of 20 summit in London.

"The President will reiterate his belief that getting the economy back on track will require an understanding that each of us must look beyond our own short-term interests to the wider set of obligations we have to each other in order for America to succeed," the White House said in a statement.

The White House said JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, American Express CEO Ken Chenault, Freddie Mac CEO John Koskinen, State Street CEO Ronald Logue, BONY-Mellon CEO Robert Kelly, Northern Trust CEO Rick Waddell, PNC CEO James Rohr, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, and USBancorp CEO Richard Davis are attending the meeting.

Cam Fine of the Independent Community Bankers and Edward Yingling of the American Bankers Association also are participating.

"The president's not going in with a real agenda," White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told CNBC Friday. "I think likely he wants to do two things. One is get a sense from them about what is the state of the financial markets, what's the state of the economy from where they sit. But two, convey to them his long-standing view that, you know, we've all got to be in this thing together."

The executives didn't take reporters' questions as they arrived at the White House shortly before noon.

Earlier this week, the Treasury Department unveiled its plans to help banks remove toxic assets from their balance sheets as well as sweeping proposals to enhance regulations over the financial sector.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama, who has struck a populist tone on the controversy over American International Group Inc.'s bonuses, won't change his message behind closed doors.

"The president isn't going to say one thing out here and a different thing in there," Gibbs said Thursday. "We're not going to get out of this financial crisis and we're not going to stabilize our financial system without healthy banks."

-By Henry J. Pulizzi, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-9256; henry.pulizzi@dowjones.com