British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised yesterday to introduce legislation to “transform” the policing of the UK’s financial sector when his government sets out its political program this week.
Brown said a Financial Services Bill would offer tough new powers to regulators to tear up bankers’ contracts if they include excessive pay and bonus deals that might threaten the stability of the financial system.
Some observers blame the bonus culture of the world’s two preeminent financial sectors — the City of London and Wall Street — for encouraging excessive risk-taking, which helped to tip the global economy into chaos.
Speaking in a podcast on the Downing Street Web site ahead of Wednesday’s policy-setting Queen’s Speech in parliament, Brown said the UK had a “bright future” ahead after the economic turmoil of the past year.
He said that despite being one of the few major European economies still in recession, the UK had fared well in terms of jobs and repossessions compared with the last slump in the early 1990s.
The main opposition Conservatives have promised to introduce belt-tightening measures if they defeat Brown’s Labour Party in next year’s general election, but Brown said he was “optimistic” about the coming period.
He said he believed it could be “one not of austerity, but progress.”
British Finance Minister Alistair Darling said the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the financial sector watchdog, would be given new powers to stop bankers collecting excessive bonuses or to cancel pay packages that rewarded undue risk-taking.
Legislation to be unveiled on Wednesday will also enable the FSA to require banks to renegotiate remuneration packages which breach its pay code, and fine those which continue to offer unjustifiable sums.
Brown said: “We will ensure that the banking crisis we have experienced over the last two years should never again come at a cost to the taxpayer.”
“This means a transformation of the way the financial sector is policed, with banks themselves and not the taxpayer made to pay for bank failings,” Brown said.
Darling told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper that bankers must start seeing themselves as “fellow citizens” and said some of the bonuses they had received were viewed by the public as “ludicrous.”
The new rules will come into effect next year if the bill completes its passage through parliament before the election — which must be held by June 3.
The rules would affect all new contracts and would apply to all British banks, including RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC as well as the British operations of global investment banks like Goldman Sachs.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
RSS