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Ex-HBOS chief lambasts ‘out of control’ FSA
Markets
by Daniel Grote on Dec 17, 2012 at 07:36
Former HBOS director Peter Cummings has lambasted the Financial Services Authority (FSA) over its handling of his fine and ban from financial services.
Cummings, former chief executive of HBOS corporate, was fined £500,000 in September and banned from financial services for his part in the bank’s collapse.
In an interview with a sub-committee of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, Cummings labelled the regulator as ‘out of control’ and said it was ‘unfair and sinister’ that he had been the only bank director singled out for regulatory action following the banking crisis.
‘We are not the only failed bank. There are at least four or five of them, and I find it curious that I was singled out,’ he said. ‘I think it is sinister and curious.’
He added that his lawyers believed the FSA penalty was ‘unlawful’, and that the regulator had reduced the fine from £800,000 to £500,000 when confronted.
‘I do think it bewildering and bizarre that in the space of a meeting and two phone calls – because they did not want me to take it to judicial review – they reduced the fine to £500,000,’ he said.
‘Frankly, it was like living in an American soap opera. I find it bewildering, bizarre and downright impossible to believe this country has an organisation that is out of control to the extent that it is. I think it is unacceptable behaviour.’
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by Emma Dunkley on May 23, 2013 at 14:09
3 comments so far. Why not have your say?
CoeurDeLion87
Dec 17, 2012 at 09:09
I think he has a point especially since the failure of HBOS was disguised by a merger with Lloyds which allegedly the regulator supported and possibly concocted.The fine does seems very arbitrary but then regulators everywhere are surviving and profiting from these shakedowns.
report thisTeddy
Dec 17, 2012 at 16:46
Remarkable naivety for a man that came from nowhere in banking to head up a consumption and borrowing mania in HBOS - that should have been stopped - which led to the bank's financial crisis.
Like the radiation which lingers after a nuclear blast, Mr Cummings name will glow in the fallout for years and he does not know why?. Ask Andy Hornby or the thousands of ordinary shareholders who have lost 90% of their savings, I am sure he or they will expound.
report thisFundador
Dec 19, 2012 at 09:57
Not disagreeing with Mr Cummings. He was always living in a soap opera. The FSA - 'out-of-control' and incompetent thought it may be - should have upped his fine rather than reduced it. No doubt the Regulator wanted to avoid the delay and expense of a judicial review. Ideally it should have taken down hundreds more of Mr Cummings' ilk : those who hijacked the banking industry and made it a place where people with any moral sense at all do not wish to work.
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