FSA slams Blair over criticism
Regulator hits out after Blair says FSA is seen as inhibiting business
The city’s financial regulator has said that prime minister Tony Blair has undermined its authority after claiming the body was ‘ seen as hugely inhibiting of efficient business’.
Link: Blair criticises Sarbanes-Oxley Act
Following a speech by Blair at London’s Institute of Public Policy Research, Financial Services Authority chairman Callum McCarthy, wrote a letter of protest, saying the remarks were ‘damaging to our influence and our abilities to support the principles of better regulation’, according to The Independent.
During the speech Blair said: ‘Something is seriously awry when the Financial Services Authority that was established to provide clear guidelines and rules for the financial services sector, and to protect the consumer against the fraudulent, is seen as hugely inhibiting of efficient business by perfectly respectable companies that have never defrauded anyone.’