Thursday, 5 July 2012

Could leaders of highly regulated institutions be easily replaced?


The FSA has announced about the misleading sales of interest rate hedging products to some SMEs on 29 June and confirmed that it reached agreement with Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS to provide appropriate redress where mis-selling has occurred. Barclays was fined £290m by authorities in the UK and the US following an investigation into the submission of various interbank offered rates. Chairman of Barclays, Marcus Agius resigned on 2 July, Chief Executive Bob Diamond and Chief Operating Officer Jerry del Missier resigned on 3 July. So, is it difficult to replace leaders of highly regulated and self–running business?

According to the FSA sold interest rate protection products involved “caps” those fix the upper limit to the interest rate on a loan and more complex derivatives such as “structured collars” which fixed interest rates within a band but introduced a degree of interest rate speculation. The investigation at Barclays revealed that some interest rates submissions reflected individual traders’ positions instead of the cost of interbank borrowing. However, its LIBOR submissions were relatively higher than in other banks during the credit crisis period which reflected appropriate management of structural risk, the risk that it may not be possible to decrease administered savings rates in line with decreases in money market (LIBOR) rates, resulting in a margin squeeze where lending is LIBOR-based.

So, is it difficult to find candidates those could prevent mistakes in the future, candidates with integrated knowledge of financial products, business operations and risk management expertise and maybe the most important feature – clear understanding of the role of financial institutions in economy?

1 comment:

  1. Interest rate hedges include a variety of different products sold to customers to help protect them
    against interest rate risk. To know more about interest rate hedging Click here.

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