The Edge

Richard Northedge takes on corporate finance

Archive for the ‘Regulation’ category

What have the regulators got against ITV?

No wonder ITV (LON:ITV) directors are angry with the Competition Commission. The company has a permanent seat at the competition regulator’s table, practically keeping it in business single-handed.
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Boardrooms stuffed with amateurs

The new corporate governance code to come in during 2010 will make a major concession: it accepts that boardrooms have become stuffed with independent amateurs, leaving insufficient executives who understand the business.
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The Big Four audit firms must get smaller

Top of the in-tray for Lady Hogg, the new chairman of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), should be how to increase auditor choice. Four big accounting firms is not enough, even if another one does not disappear.
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Are foreign females really better than British women?

Women in boardrooms is usually seen as a sexist issues. It’s not; it’s about xenophobia. Selection committees are not anti-women but anti-British.
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Stop the infighting and get on with the job

We expect Tory and Labour spokesman to be political but it is worrying to find the Bank of England and Financial Services Authority playing them at their own game. Aren’t the Bank and the regulator meant to be seeking stability? And isn’t the Bank supposed to be independent?

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Don’t make everyone adopt Walker’s rules for banks

Bang! Sir David Walker’s report closes the banks’ stable door after the money has gone. But how long before his tough boardroom measures become ‘best practice’ for all companies, i.e compulsory?

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Companies should be allowed to vote on Crossrail

No taxation without representation” was the cry of colonial entrepreneurs in 18th century America before the revolution. But in 21st century Britain, business still sees its coffers raided without being given chance to vote.
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Penalising the fat years could make all years lean

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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Criticism begins at home for FSA

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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