New PRA boss says it’s full steam ahead for City red tape despite Brexit
The new chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) will say this evening that it will push ahead with enforcing the next tranche of City red tape despite the recent Brexit vote.
In a speech at the City Banquet at Mansion House, Sam Woods is expected to say it is "full steam ahead" as far as implementing rules like ring-fencing is concerned, despite the timing of the referendum outcome and its subsequent fallout.
"I won't pretend this is a perfectly happy coincidence: in an ideal world we would not restructure our banking system and extricate ourselves from the EU at the same time," Woods will say. "But the execution risks of managing these changes simultaneously are outweighed by the benefits of increasing firms’ resolvability and removing the public subsidy from banks."
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The head of the Bank of England's supervision division is also expected to dub the rules which have come since the financial crisis a "revolution", and restated the goal for a stabilised banking sector where taxpayer money is never again used to bail out a City institution.
"I think those goals are in sight, and the remaining path to them is now largely set," he is expected to say.
From 2019, banks will essentially be required to fence off their retail divisions, complete with a capital cushion, from their investment units.