Eddie was a model public servant: that’s why Gordon was so rude to him
In Tokyo in the mid-Eighties, I bumped into a very senior Japanese investment banker who had just been to London to negotiate an operating licence. ‘We met…’ he paused for effect, bowing slightly at the neck and adopting what I can only describe as obsequious grimace, ‘…Eddie-George-san!’ All the other Japanese present nodded vigorously and sucked their teeth in accord. Lord George, who died last Saturday aged 70, was a big player on the world banking stage long before he became Governor of the Bank of England in 1993. He was also a model public servant: modest, calm, courteous, firm-principled, and a master of market technicalities. It was perhaps because he was so respected by everyone else that he was treated so brusquely by Gordon Brown, whose ‘tripartite’ regulatory structure — which removed the ‘banking supervision’ role from the Bank and handed it to the FSA — was imposed without consultation a few days after the 1997 election.
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