Tuesday 9 February 2010

So, Farewell Then, Hector Sants

So Hector Sants is 'unexpectedly' stepping down after his 3-year tenure as Chief Executive of the FSA - not sticking around to see whether it has a future at all after the General Election.

The Grauniad reckons he's in the clear, sort-of:

"He joined the regulator in May 2004 as the managing director responsible for wholesale and institutional markets which allowed him to avoid direct criticism over the supervision of Northern Rock"

Wrong.
As we've said before, anyone in a senior FSA post can have been expected to clock the extreme dangers inherent in NR's sui generis business model and done something about it, if only to put it on a closely-monitored watch list. The 'wholesale and institutional markets' had the Crock marked down as being in Big Trouble before ever 2007 dawned.

The pyramid of blame has one Gordon 'race-to-the-bottom' Brown squarely skewered at its pointy apex: but the senior ranks at the FSA pre-2007 are close to the top on the executive side.

ND

6 comments:

measured said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
measured said...

Well, he will probably be on the next Queen's Birthday Honours List at this rate. Look what Clara got.

Budgie said...

Shut the FSA, imprison Brown.

Anonymous said...

Quite right. Hang him on a lamp post as far as am concerned..

Nick Drew said...

all those in favour ...

James said...

aye.

CEO's too.

Stick that in your moral hazard and smoke it.