The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), one of Britain’s primary financial regulators, has featured heavily within Financial Regulation Matters , for obvious reasons. However, a lot of the recent posts focusing on the regulator have been concerned with its approach to the unfolding scandal at RBS, with its role in the publication of a damning report drawing attention most recently. However, recently there have been suggestions that the regulator has ‘ gone soft ’ in its approach to the regulated, with the RBS debacle being cited as the most compelling evidence for the regulator’s approach. In this post, these accusations will be assessed against the evidence, with a larger question being asked with regards to both the role of the regulator in the larger picture, and its willingness to take action. The decision by the FCA to commission, and then refuse to release a damning report into the operations of RBS and its treatment of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has caused outra...

RBS has been the subject of a number of posts here in Financial Regulation Matters (ten), with posts concentrating on their incredibly poor performance over the last two decades. Posts have looked at aspects such as the increasingly poor financial results being disclosed by the bank and Fred Goodwin’s close-call when he narrowly avoided having his day in court regarding his performance in the run up to the Financial Crisis. However, in today’s post, the focus will be on the so-called ‘Global Restructuring Group’ (GRG) and the sentiment that its problems are causing; we have looked at the issue before with regards to a leaked document that partially detailed the abuse of power demonstrated by the group, but the reaction to that leaked report has been incredibly revealing, and will form the focus of this piece. We heard last time how the GRG, a division within RBS which was tasked with assisting SMEs navigate troubled periods , was in fact doing the opposite and was actively c...