Britain Points Fingers At Shareholders – US-FOREX.US
Britain’s “tripartite” system of regulating the financial system, consisting of the Treasury Department, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England, has recently gotten slack for reported disagreements. But at a banking conference on Tuesday, they made it very clear that shareholders were most responsible for their market woes. “Shareholders are at the front line of responsibility” when it came to facing the consequences of their troubled investments, said Paul Myners, the financial services secretary to the U.K Treasury Department.A focus on shareholder rights by institutions investing on behalf of their clients led to “excessive risk,” so going forward they could not expect the government to step in with compensation when their investments turned sour, he said. Myners, former chairman of the Guardian Media Group – the publisher of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers – was speaking at a British Bankers Association annual conference to discuss the way ahead for regulation of the industry. Earlier in the day, HSBC Chairman Stephen Green joined regulators in expressing concern about the return of an excessive compensation culturein London’s financial district. A Smackdown For British Banks.”) “We have been far more open than institutions across the work about failures,” Turner told the conference. He added that the FSA was already beginning to change the rules on liquidity and capital, without waiting for international agreements to be struck first. “We felt we should just get on with it.”