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The Hot Seat: Sebastian Fairhurst

Monday 29 March 2010 - by Nicola York

 In the Hot Seat this month is the European Financial Services Round Table secretary general who voices concerns over the fragmentary approach countries are taking to tackle the financial crisis

Name: Sebastian Fairhurst
Job title: Secretary general
Organisation: European Financial Services Round Table
Type of organisation: Non-profit
Members in organisation: 19 members – CEOs and Chairmen of European banks and insurance companies including Swiss Re, Aviva, Santander, Axa and HSBC.
Founded: March 2001
Head office: Brussels
Purpose: To contribute to the European public policy debate on financial services issues and the single market.
How it works: Members meet three times per year and decide on what topics the associates, steering and working groups should work on.



What are the main issues you are looking at now and in the near future?
“The supervisory framework. We’ve been saying for years that the supervisory system in Europe is not efficient, nor effective and it should be overhauled. It is far too fragmented, far too much along the national lines and there should be more of a European supervisory framework for insurance and for banks.
“Another important topic now is the G20. We completely agree with the ideas and with the proposals that were put out politically. We are only afraid that we see a diversion from that path which was taken earlier on in the sense that member states start taking their own initiatives and possibly implement it in a different way.”

Why does this worry you?
“There is definitely concern in a sense that you will have this fragmentation of supervision and, in countries’ overall approach, how capital requirements are run. We have always said there is a need to have the Basel II framework consistently applied. In the US it is not implemented so definitely there is a disparity in approach. There is a concern that you will have in the future, recommendations coming out of the Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee and so on, but that they will be either not accepted or not implemented but may be implemented in Europe, so then you have a possible distortion and unlevel playing field between Europe and the international players. I’m not looking only at the US because of course Asia is playing an increasing role.”


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