“BRITAIN needs a tough, strong financial conduct regulator,” said George Osborne, Britain’s chancellor, on July 17th as he announced that he had effectively ousted Martin Wheatley, the City’s tough, strong financial conduct regulator since 2013. Financiers quietly toasted the departure, due in September, of the figure they had come to see as the bank-basher-in-chief. Whom Mr Osborne appoints to replace him at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will be a strong indication of whether a “new settlement” with banks is in the offing.
Regulating conduct in an industry whose behavioural problems rival those of a sugared-up toddler was never going to make Mr Wheatley a popular man. And popular he was not. Aggressively, and often clumsily, the FCA pursued wrongdoing and levied fines of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Successes included whacking investment banks for rigging currencies and interest rates, as well as high-street banks for mis-selling complex financial products to the public. Failures included a media briefing so botched it sent life insurance firms’ shares plummeting for no good reason. Mr Wheatley...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, Britain’s bank-basher-in-chief is toppled
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