Britain’s new coalition government is pushing ahead with its promise to dismantle the country’s Financial Services Authority and create a new agency to fight white-collar crime. But already concerns are emerging that the move could stall enforcement efforts, especially against insider trading.
Chancellor George Osborne used a June 16 speech in London to pledge that the FSA would be history by 2012. His main aim is to shift responsibility for oversight of financial firms back to the Bank of England, so that regulation of individual firms and of the financial system overall sits in one place. But Osborne said efforts to tackle financial crime must be overhauled too, and he was “determined to simplify the confusing and overlapping responsibilities … to improve detection and enforcement.”
