Explain the Structure and Objectives of the Uk Regulatory System and Assess the Impact the Independent Commission on Banking Recommendations by Sir John Vickers Will Have Upon the Uk Financial Services Industry

“Explain the structure and objectives of the UK regulatory system and assess the impact the independent commission on banking recommendations by Sir John Vickers will have upon the UK financial services industry.”

The UK has a legal system, which is unique in the world, it is case based. This means every decision made in court is based on prior decisions and lawyers have to argue with cases similar to the one they are handling.
The UK regulatory system is as old as London as one of the world’s leading financial centres, 600 years. It started off as a mainly self-regulated system and was kept like that until the 1980’s. This happen for good reasons, the main one was self-interest. The city of London was like a village or so-called boys club. Members were mainly people from the upper-middle class and upper class, with a very good background, social network and an explicit education. If something went wrong they tried to fix it themselves so no embarrassment was done in front of the public eye.
Before the Wilson Committee in 1980 went on to finally introduce some regulations, the only statutory regulated market was the one of securities, which fell under the oversight of the Bank of England and Joint Review Body. Also the non-statutory bodies were covered by some statutory regulations were in the form of the Companies Act and the Prevention of Fraud Act 1958. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) administered them but they only established rules to a certain degree. The Companies Act only covered rules of conduct such as disclosure of information, capital structure and duties of directors, where the Prevention of Fraud Act was only about the authorisation of security dealers.
After more and more scandals with the collapse of Norton Warburg as the highlight something had to happen. The Wilson Committee went on to question the previous arrangement and to make recommendations for aspects that need to be improved. In 1981 the result of this committee, the Gower... [continues]

Read full essay