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Econ chair warns of 'apartheid' regulation

Monday 22 November 2010 - by Andrew Hickley

The chair of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee has warned that European colleges of supervisors could impose "apartheid"-like regulatory burdens on international firms.

Speaking to GFS following a speech at a Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Supervisors conference last week, MEP Sharon Bowles expressed her concern that colleges are making decisions in a European context, without considering the prospects of firms who have large international interests.

She says: "If you take someone like HSBC or any big bank for example, where they have got a lot of international branches, and then maybe they have got European branches as well, but they might have bigger interests outside Europe than inside Europe.

"You have got these colleges which are making various types of decisions which won't necessarily take account of the international situation.

"There have been some concerns raised that if this happened where currently the seat is in the UK, it might be another incentive for them to move it out of the UK."



She says that if regulators and policymakers do not take these factors into account then they will create "an absurdity".

She says: "We have to ensure that we take account of the situation where a group may have substantial, or even a majority, of its interests outside the EU.

"It would indeed be unfortunate if we force the development of apartheid where a group has to be either 'European' or 'International' but cannot be both."

She adds: "Every time they have been talking in European legislation about colleges it generally assumes everyone is European. It doesn't discriminate, but it is just a way of thinking, because that's how most of the European banks are."


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