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FSA Should Stay, says President
At the annual dinner of the Securities and Investment Institute in Queens College last night, the Regional President, Marcus Johnson, called for a wide debate on future regulation, but said the FSA should stay.
At the annual dinner of the Securities and Investment Institute in Queens College last night, the Regional President, Marcus Johnson, called for a wide debate on future regulation, but said the FSA should continue to be in charge of everything except the banks.
Mr Johnson began by saying recovery in financial markets was well underway, that the worst point was last October and much progress had been made since then. It was the duty of the Institute and its members to see that the regulatory system was improved and structural reform was made where required. He had publicly called for the break-up of the major banks and for the transfer of all bank regulation to the Bank of England and he continued to believe this was essential.
However Mr Johnson was concerned that the debate about future regulation should be conducted by those who had real experience, real clients and had invested time and effort in educating the current regulators. The worst outcome would be for the FSA to become a political football. Reform was good, debate was good, but if politicians could keep out of it a better result was likely.
The FSA should remain, stability in regulation should be the aim and to start again would be a retrograde step. The FSA was not perfect, it was too prescriptive, the rule books were ridiculously long and detailed, but starting again with a new set of regulations would create even more problems. It was up to members of the Institute to make their views known and he hoped that they would do so.
At the same dinner George Littlejohn, a directors of the Institute, announced that a Royal Charter would shortly be awarded to what would become the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment.
Feature Created: 2009-07-24
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