If any saver had lost money in the financial crisis, the public might be more worried about regulation. As it is, the new UK watchdog regime looks like re-arranging deckchairs and investors still have little perception of risk.
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Public-sector top pay is too high – as is much senior private-sector remuneration – but a 20-to-1 ratio between top and bottom rates is not the pay to constrain it. Nevermind the numbers, any ratio is wrong.
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Who have the watchdogs helped by telling public companies to report their profits sooner? Not the boards of directors who have to curtail their summer breaks to rush out June figures before the August bank holiday, and not their shareholders either.
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Is there any point shareholders voting on companies’ remuneration reports? By the time they reject the boardroom pay the directors have already pocketed the proceeds and there is nothing to stop the company behaving as badly again next year.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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