New FCA boss Andrew Bailey in quotes
He is a Bank of England lifer – but Andrew Bailey, incoming FCA chief executive certainly has a way with words.
Some of them give an insight into the man who George Osborne believes can lead the watchdog into its new era – others are just plain colourful. And so far he's managed to avoid any of the blunders and bungles that characterised Martin Wheatley's time at the FCA.
Here are a few of Bailey's best bits.
January 2011
“Market discipline should be the first line of defence – not regulators like me coming along and beating people over the head.”
November 2011
“There was arguably a suicidal competition in the run-up to the crisis of a sort we do not want to see repeated.”
"There was a culture of gaming [at Barclays]. It had to change… We drew the conclusion that there was a problem with this institution."
December 2012
“I don't, by the way, tend to ring people up and say 'get your bonuses down'. I'm not sure I've ever made that call, contrary to public wisdom.”
“We are not operating a system where no bank can fail…. some banks will fail, it's good for the industries quite frankly that firms do leave when their business models are failing.”
“You could have had the archangel Gabriel running the FSA, but it was only a 15-year-old institution. It hadn't got that standing.”
“It is obviously painful as a prudential supervisor to see capital going out the door, as happens with fines.”
“It is a story of the failure of a bank that did not undertake complicated activity or so-called racy investment banking. Hbos was at root a simple bank that nonetheless managed to create a big problem.”