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Adair Turner, Chairman of UK FSA

Tuesday 14 December 2010 - by Nicola York

 Having previously branded banks "socially useless", UK Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Turner has garnered a reputation as a straight-talker and comes 48th in the GFS Power 50.

He started the year with a pop at the accounting industry for playing an "important contributory role in provoking general sectoral collapse and macroeconomic recession".

Chairman since September 2008, he has called for a return to an expected loss regime which would see banks making more provisions up front. He also pushed for less use of fair value which he said helped to inflate bankers' bonuses and egos.

In the Spring, he turned his attentions to currency speculators branding the foreign exchange carry trade of "zero value and potentially destabilising".

In June, the coalition Government formalised its plans to break up the FSA and hand over powers to the Bank of England and a new Consumer Protection and Markets Authority, which would also sit within the Bank. Turner said he welcomed the changes and would stay in his role for the transition period - expected to be around two years.

"I've always said I was agnostic on the form [of regulation]. I've been concerned about the transition," he said.


Over the past year, Turner has repeatedly pushed for a radical reassessment of the financial liberalisation which influenced regulation and policy in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

He has argued that focusing on too-big-to-fail institutions will not address the economic volatility resulting from the credit and asset price cycle. Instead other "radical options" must be considered.

The chairman does not think a silver bullet structural solution can overcome these challenges and has rather advocated that regulatory and macro-prudential tools should be informed by a "philosophy deeply sceptical of past arguments that financial liberalisation, innovation, and deepening is axiomatically beneficial".

In addition to his work at the FSA, Turner is a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Cass Business School.

Learn more about the GFS Power 50, a countdown of the most influential people in worldwide financial regulation in 2010.


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