Adair Turner, chairman of the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority, warned of "wasteful, competitive behavior" by regulators on Tuesday. His comments, delivered to legislators at a hearing of the Parliamentary Treasury Select Committee, were an implied rebuke to Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King who made disarmingly candid pleas for more power last week.
While King lamented his organization's "limited" powers, Turner's altogether shrewder approach to the question of the Bank of England's role in banking supervision was to say he was "agnostic." His emphasis was on co-operation rather than on fighting a turf war. According to a report on Wednesday by the BBC, however, the opposition Conservative Party, the pollsters' favorite to win power at the next general election, which must be held by spring 2010, would indeed grant the bank sweeping powers to regulate banks and other financial institutions.
Turner's remarks also highlighted differences of opinion on banks that are too big to fail. While King had said that such banks were simply too big and needed to be broken up, Turner said he agreed with U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who had proposed "not an absolute limit on size, that would be very difficult to achieve, but a sliding scale of capital requirements."
Separately, Turner made some pointed comments about banks' "aggressive" hiring that was once again leading to irresponsible levels of compensation. - Neil Sen
See earlier story from Dealscape
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