Another banking review is pointless: just carry on naming, shaming and jailing

Was the Financial Conduct Authority leaned on by the Chancellor to scrap its ‘review of banking culture’? Or did it decide pragmatically that its resources would be better devoted to pursuing individual cases of cheating and criminality? I suspect the answer is a bit of both.

Acting FCA chief Tracey McDermott — a no-nonsense northerner and former litigation lawyer — is reputed to be just as tough as her predecessor Martin Wheatley, who was ousted by Osborne last year, apparently for being too much the turbulent priest. Tracey became a regulator because she was interested in seeing ‘if human behaviour could be improved’ — in particular, the behaviour of people who are not dishonest by nature but are swept along by the tide. Clearly that’s a cultural issue, and the scrapped review’s declared aim to examine the link between excessive pay and the propensity to rule-bend or take excessive risk might have gone to the heart of it.