Simon Dingemans, the former finance chief for GlaxoSmithKline and long-term employee of Goldman Sachs, has surprisingly and abruptly quit his role as the Chairman of the Financial Reporting Council, less than a year after taking the helm. In this post we will look back at his tenure and find out why he has decided to move back into the private sector. We analysed Dingemans’ appointment late last year here in Financial Regulation Matters , where we discussed his taking aim at the auditing oligopoly that the FRC has responsibility for regulating. At the time, Dingemans stated that ‘ this is a rare opportunity to reform something so wholeheartedly ’, and he made the break-up of the ‘Big Four’ and their oligopolistic hold on the auditing marketplace a priority. However, since his appointment it has been business as usual. The regulator has continued investigating members of the oligopoly, whilst also calling on members to upgrade their auditing tools . This is nothing out of the ...

In this very short post we will react to the news that broke today regarding the future of the Financial Reporting Council. We have covered the FRC on a number of occasions here in Financial Regulation Matters and the posts have been highly critical of what was a feeble regulator. We had only looked previously at the regulator and the fact that it was under review, but today the final decision was made on the future of the FRC. Founded in 1990, the Financial Reporting Council was today confirmed by the Government as being no more. In its official press release, the Government stated that, after considering the Kingsman Review, the FRC would be replaced with a new regulator. That regulator will be called the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority . The business media are reporting that the new regulator ‘ will have stronger statutory powers, including the ability to make direct changes to accounts and powers to require rapid explanations from companies and publish reports ab...

We have reviewed the collapse of BHS here in Financial Regulation Matters , whilst we have also reviewed the performance of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) here . We also looked at a number of investigations that the FRC were undertaking with regards to the audit sector, with the regulator’s record fine against PwC for its auditing of BHS being one of the more recent actions taken. However, what looks like a victory for the regulator, at first glance, is quickly becoming anything but, and in today’s post we shall look at the sentiment of the regulators actions in this case. When the announcement was made that PwC would be fined, and one of its partners involved in the audit banned for life, it was suggested by the regulator that they would be releasing an extensive report into what went wrong . However, Sir Philip Green initiated legal proceedings to amend, and essentially delay the report from being published on the grounds that it would negatively affect members of h...

Today’s post acts as a small review of two specific news pieces that broke today concerning two financial regulators in the U.K. Whilst one would have had to have been quick to spot these stories, with both falling down the list of financial news stories rather quickly, each has particularly strong knock-on effects, but for differing reasons. So, in this post, a little more detail will be added as both of those stories represent the latest iterations of themes that have formed the basis of a number of posts here in Financial Regulation Matters . The first story is concerned with the infamous report conducted by the FCA regarding the actions of RBS and its ‘Global Restructuring Group’ (GRG). We have covered this issue on a number of occasions, and heard most recently that whilst the FCA has been busy investigating and punishing a number of firms of their failures, firms like BrightHouse and Equifax, their hesitancy to take any serious action against RBS has garnered plenty of jus...