FSA 'no longer a soft touch'

Published on Thursday 23 July 2009 21:23

ADAIR Turner, chairman of City watchdog the Financial Services Authority, yesterday warned that the financial system had "blown up spectacularly" in recent times, but the group's chief executive claimed the regulator was no longer regarded as "a soft touch".

Turner told the FSA's annual public meeting that between the summer of 2007 and early 2009 the global financial system had suffered its worst crisis "since the emergence 200 years ago of modern industrial capitalism".

He said the world had shown it had the tools to prevent another Great Depression, but could not prevent the severe economic harm that had resulted.

He said: "The financial system of the recent past with its … ever more complex financial innovation didn't just go a little bit off course, it blew up spectacularly."

Hector Sants, the FSA's chief executive, said the regulator had been "stretched" in discharging its statutory aims in 2008, but added that he believed the regulator's new "intrusive and intensive" style of supervision had shown it was no "soft touch".