Having seen up close the damage caused to the UK’s financial services industry by excessive and arcane regulation (eg bank ringfencing), or the completely pointless versions of it (eg most parts of the EU’s post financial crisis Mifid II reforms), I couldn’t agree more with Andy Haldane’s op-ed “How to dismantle the UK’s regulatory Tower of Babel” (Opinion, February 8).
However, one easy move that might raise those “animal spirits” would be to relax the restrictions around gifts and entertainment. It’s not clear who has benefited from what amounted to the cancellation of an activity that before 2008 was a key component in relationship building across many parts of capital markets.
Sure, there was some excess back in the glory years of peak City (not that I worked in a part of it that was very peaky), but what of it? These days in banking it’s hard to buy a client a sandwich without attracting the ire of compliance (in the name of the Financial Conduct Authority’s onerous guidelines), let alone take a client to a major sporting event or a fancy game of golf, all of which are viewed as bribery inside many companies.
Ed Allchin
Director, Fintrinsic; Founder of Autonomous Research, London W9, UK
