FT.com / Companies / Financial Services - Tories stifle FSA staffing drive.
The Financial Services Authority’s efforts to strengthen its supervisory and enforcement work by recruiting hundreds more staff have been thrown off course by the Conservative party’s plan to disband the regulator. Since George Osborne, shadow chancellor, said last month he would shift the FSA’s core supervisory role to a beefed-up Bank of England, and set up a Consumer Protection Agency to handle the rest of the body’s work, the regulator has suffered a crisis of confidence affecting some top staff and potential recruits, according to headhunters, consultants and FSA insiders.
Thanks George. Just great to undermine the regulators on behalf of your friends, isn't it?
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What Osborne is suggesting is that the FSA, which so spectacularly failed to regulate financial institutions, is stripped of its powers and these powers be handed to the BoE, which was the case and which broadly worked well until 1997.
What is wrong with that? Osborne might be a smug and smarmy git but you are simply allowing your prejudices to impair your thinking.
Peter
We might agree on Osborne’s smugness
We might agree the FSA is not delivering
But as someone who might have power Osborne has to show that he knows how to use it responsibly. That’s where he is failing by speaking now as he does.
Richard
Should Osborne say nothing about his plans for fear of disrupting the FSA’s recruitment drive (and watch people take jobs he knows won’t exist shortly), or scrap his plans because they interfere with the FSA’s recruitment? You should weigh his proposals for regulation on their merits, and not on the basis of the impact on recruitment.
Bruno
Oh the FSA has made horrible mistakes
So has the Bank of England
If we’re discussing merit we want real regulation by independent people
Is Osborne offering that – or is the job lined up for a ‘chum’?
Richard, No idea. Are you thinking of anyone in particular? But now you’re talking about the merits of the alternatives, which is the way this should be approached, and not via the impact on recruitment.