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.
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