Editor’s Note: CRE, a regulatory watchdog, has long had an interest in regulatory issues on both sides of the Atlantic.
From: Mirror (UK)
Prudential Regulation Authority boss Andrew Bailey said: “It is more than odd that actions have been taken against people lower down”
By Graham Hiscott
A watchdog wants to know why failed chiefs got off scot-free over the banking crisis.
Prudential Regulation Authority boss Andrew Bailey said: “It is more than odd that actions have been taken against people lower down.”
Mr Bailey, also a deputy Bank of England governor, added: “But no formal action against has been taken against any chief executive or any chairman.”
His comments, at a London Financial Services Summit yesterday, follow a review ordered by Business Secretary Vince Cable into whether former HBOS chiefs Sir James Crosby, Andy Hornby and chairman Lord Stevenson, should be banned over the bank’s near collapse in 2008.
Sir James has offered to hand back his knighthood, and give up a slice of his pension, after criticism in a recent banking commission report.
Powers to ban bankers as directors are believed to have been last used after the 1995 Barings Bank collapse.
Mr Bailey added: “ It has been some surprise this has not happened.”
His comments came as Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary called on crooked bankers to be jailed.
MP Chuka Umunna said: Chuka Umanna MP said: “It cannot be right that someone who seeks to cheat the benefits system out of a couple of hundred pounds in my constituency may well be thrown into jail for doing so, but those who seek to rig the financial system and receive hundreds of thousands of pounds as a result never seem to suffer the same fate.”