Insider trading preceded 31 per cent of takeovers, screamed the headlines: London is more corrupt that any other financial centre. Well dig deeper into the data and the City is not quite as guilty as charged.
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If stock lending is so bad the regulators have considered banning it, why is selling votes any better? Treasury minister Lord Myners seems determined to end the concept of one share, one vote.
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The Tories wanted the tripartite of financial regulators scrapped. Alistair Darling has done it. It will now be called the Council for Financial Stability. And given more powers.
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The pensions industry has joined the financial regulator in using hindsight to say we should have stored away more during the boom years. The snag is, that’s the time when there seems least need to do it.
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What Lord Turner’s review of financial regulation fails to mention is that the Financial Services Authority spent too much time protecting consumers from banks and not enough protecting banks from themselves. In the end, curbing the banks would have been the best consumer protection.
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Light-touch regulation is about to be axed but self-regulation still exists in one quarter of Canary Wharf. The Financial Services Authority has been allowed to identify its own deficiencies and remedy them. Again.
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