The head of British bank Standard Chartered yesterday attacked plans for tougher global regulation following the financial crisis, warning costs would be passed on to customers.
Chief executive Peter Sands said policymakers were “kidding themselves” if they thought higher capital and liquidity requirements for banks would be absorbed by financial institutions and their shareholders.
“The reality is that a lot of that incremental cost will just get passed on to their customers in terms of increased pricing,” Sands said in an interview with the Financial Times.
“This is not a risk-free, cost-free game here.”
The comments come as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is set to announce today new powers for regulators to tear up bankers’ contracts if they include excessive pay and bonus deals that threaten the financial system.
“It seems to be impractical and contrary to the government’s intention of trying to move forward in a globally co-ordinated fashion,” Sands said.
“This could undoubtedly harm London as a global financial center,” he said.
Some observers blame the bonus culture of the world’s two pre-eminent financial sectors — the City of London and Wall Street — for encouraging excessive risk-taking, which helped to tip the global economy into chaos.
Sands said there was already evidence that bonus guidelines drawn up at the G20 summit of world leaders in September to defer payments and link them to shares in their bank were warping competition.
He said the measures were being swiftly introduced in Europe but not elsewhere.
Standard Chartered, an emerging markets bank, had lost out to Asian rivals in battles to recruit top bankers because new British rules ban paying guaranteed bonuses, he said.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS