Carney hits out at rogue bankers
Pope joins chorus of criticism over ‘scandal of inequality’
City Editor THE Bank of England launched a fresh assault on rogue operators in the City of London last night – as the Pope attacked the ‘scandal of global inequality’.
Governor Mark Carney suggested that many people working in finance still do not know how to behave even after the scandals of recent years.
Speaking at the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism at The Mansion House in the heart of the Square Mile, he said bankers got away ‘relatively scot-free’ during the financial crisis.
The summit also heard from Pope Francis, pictured, who said business was a ‘ noble vocation’ but added there was an ‘urgent need to address the scandal of global inequality and to bring economic development and benefits to all people’.
Carney said the banks and other financial institutions had in recent years worked in a ‘ heads they win, tails you lose environment that undermined trust in the system’.
He said that while Britain’s biggest lenders have been hit with huge fines for rigging financial mar- kets, individuals responsible ‘ have gotten away relatively scot-free’.
The former Goldman Sachs banker said: ‘A lot of people in these markets didn’t really know – and probably still do not know – what is expected of them because it hasn’t been adequately defined in everyday language.’ The Bank of England this month launched a crackdown on rogue traders – including an increase in the maximum prison sentence from seven to ten years for cheats guilty of market abuse. More businesses, including hedge funds, fund managers and brokers, will be subject to the rules, forcing senior executives to take responsibility for misconduct that occur on their watch.
The financial sector and banking sector have been rocked by a series of scandals in recent years including the mis- selling of payment protection insurance, the rigging of interest rates and the £3.5trillion a day foreign exchange market.
Britain’s biggest banks – including Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC – have received fines amounting to tens of billions of pounds since the crisis. However, not a single senior banker has been jailed.
Unveiling the plans two weeks ago, again at The Mansion House, Carney said that they were required ‘to reverse the tide of ethical drift’ that had left the industry’s ‘social licence’ in question in recent years.
Delivering the message from the Pope yesterday, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England in Wales voiced concern over exces- sive pay. Asked if there was moral justification for paying people millions, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said it was ‘hard to find’.
He told the conference: ‘Our world today is scarred by indefensible inequalities and injustices. Our common home is disfigured, with rooms of plenty alongside threadbare rooms of acute poverty. Systems that work for the few and not for the many require radical rethinking and a conversion of mind and heart.’