Turner urges City reform
ADAIR Turner will tonight issue a call to arms to the City’s business leaders, urging them not to miss the opportunity to reform the country’s financial services sector following the recent banking crises.
The chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), who has faced criticism in the past few days after labelling the City as having got “beyond a reasonable size”, will be speaking at the Lord Mayor’s banquet to a City audience for the first time since he made those remarks.
Turner also enraged many in the City by suggesting at a roundtable discussion organised by Prospect magazine the possible introduction of a tax on financial transactions, a so-called Tobin tax.
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, described Turner’s ideas as “crackers” and CBI director general Richard Lambert said that the City’s top regulator was asking the wrong questions.
Turner will label those who think there is no urgent need for reform as out of touch. Friends say he is passionate about moving along the path of reform. “He is desperate to set out a programme of reform to prevent a repeat of the extreme banking crisis that we have just experienced,” one friend said.