NOW WATCHDOG MUST SINK TEETH INTO THE BIG BOYS

WELL done to the bloodhounds at the FCA for bringing to justice the culprits in the Madeira boiler room scam – it’s just a pity the watchdog does not bring the same zeal to bigger scandals.

Those sentenced yesterday took around £2.7m from 170 investors, which plainly qualifies as a substantial fraud – but it’s relatively small beer in banking circles.

To put it in context, TSB boss Paul Pester’s bonus for 2016 was £2.4m. Of course, Pester has not been dishonest, just deeply disappointing. He turned out to be just as much of a let-down as the rest. The FCA is investigating the tech meltdown at TSB but its findings are likely to be a damp squib. When faced with a large and powerful target, the regulators become paralysed.

It is leading to a loss of faith in the system. Small-firm owners who lost money in the RBS-GRG and HBOS Reading debacles in particular are frustrated and disillusioned. There are other cases such as the RBS Shareholder Action Group, which won a £200m settlement from the bank last year. That seemed like a result until it emerged it had been co-founded by a known fraudster and that there are serious concerns about how it has been run. Yet it appears to have fallen through the regulatory net entirely.

The rationale is that these big cases do not fall within the regulator’s remit, but sticking slavishly to that line is a betrayal of victims. If FCA boss Andrew Bailey feels he does not have the powers he needs, he should fight to get them.