Sir Howard struggles to keep FSA staff
Leading accountancy partnerships and other City firms have been warned to stop poaching key staff from the Financial Services Authority.
Link: FSA to name and shame money launderers
Chairman Sir Howard Davies revealed his organisation has written to financial services institutions ‘to say they should be thinking carefully about aggressively recruiting regulators’.
Giving evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee today (Thursday) on the FSA’s work he said the main culprits were the consultancies.
Davies said he was able to match basic salaries on offer from other City businesses but not investment banks bonuses. He claimed he was able, instead, to offer an ‘interesting’ range of work.
He said his difficulty was not in recruitment but in retention as firms scramble for experts in new rules and regulations.
Earlier Davies denied he had lost the initiative on policing accountants to Europe as the EU prepare responses to US regulation post Enron.
He defended a system of co-operation between Europeanÿmember state regulators but admitted that it might need to change to a more central structure over the next 15 years.