Tough at the top

Timon Molloy, Editor

Delegates to the FSA’s conference on implementing the Market Abuse Directive (MAD) quickly fell silent as the man with ultimate responsibility for bringing errant financial services players to book took his stand at the podium. Andrew Procter, Director of Enforcement, started with a comforting message:“The balance between enforcement and supervision work is not likely to change,” he said with an allusion to recent comment by Chairman Callum McCarthy that the FSA is not an enforcement-led regulator.“Despite the views of armchair investigators in the House of Commons and the media we don’t feel the urgent need to ‘be out there’ in the enforcement area,” said Mr Procter. Interest in the division’s activities moved in six-month cycles he suggested: last Christmas there was talk about the lack of cases coming through and now there was talk of too many; by next Christmas, it would probably be back to too few again.