Regulators and enforcers study Equitable report
Lord Penrose's report into the collapse of Equitable Life is now under examination from both government regulators and financial watchdogs.
Link: SFO to investigate Equitable
Treasury officials, and officials from the DTI, Financial Services Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and a ‘small number of the current senior management of Equitable Life and its advisers’ are examining the report, Ruth Kelly, financial secretary to the Treasury announced today.
Limited extracts of the report have been shown to ‘certain named individuals from the current Equitable’ to assist the Treasury with its public functions, Kelly said.
A spokesman for the Treasury said the report is not likely to be published until after the half-term parliamentary recess, which begins today and runs until 23 February.
With the Treasury promising to provide at least two days notice the report will now not be published until 25 February at the earliest. The spokesman added that the Treasury intends to ‘publish the report in full’.
Paul Braithwaite, general secretary of the Equitable Members Action Group, said on Newsnight last night: ‘With these Inquiries it’s ALL in the remit, isn’t it? We saw that with Hutton. This was an incomplete remit. It reports to the Treasury and the Treasury is sharing it with the other two prime suspects.
‘And the people who it MOST concerns, parliament and policyholders, are denied it for week after week. We’re being dangled on a string and one wonders what the HELL is going on behind the walls of the Treasury while they plot their damage limitation like some modern Machiavellis.’