The surprise resignation last month of John Tiner after less than four years as CEO of the U.K. Financial Services Authority has opened the position of Europe’s most influential regulator. The FSA’s first “pure” chief executive since the agency was created in 2001 -- previously, the role was combined with that of chairman -- Tiner won praise for slashing bureaucracy while embracing the principles-based (rather than rules-based) ethos that is attracting a following in New York and Washington.
An exArthur Andersen man, Tiner had been expected to leave in 2009 or 2010, after a new chairman had settled in. (Sir Callum McCarthy retires in September 2008.) But the 50-year-old Tiner, who’ll step down in July, says he wants one more job in the private sector before he retires.
In the race to succeed Tiner, there are three clear front-runners, all from within the FSA: Hector Sants, head of wholesale and institutional markets; retail head Clive Briault; and regulatory services head David Kenmir. The shortest odds are on Sants, who joined the FSA in 2004 from Credit Suisse First Boston, where he had been head of the European arm. Responsible for all regulated markets and the firms that operate within them, he has “barely put a foot wrong,” says John Tattersall, chairman of the financial services regulatory group at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London. Kenmir, who joined the FSA in 1988 from one of its predecessor bodies, the Securities and Futures Authority, has a longer pedigree in the “maze” of regulatory politics, notes Jonathan Herbst, former head of European law at the FSA and now a partner at London law firm Norton Rose. Briault is considered a longer shot: An economist by background, he joined the FSA in 1998 after 18 years at the Bank of England.
External names in play include two with close ties to the FSA. Jonathan Bloomer, former CEO of U.K. insurer Prudential, served three years as chairman of the Financial Services Practitioner Panel, a powerful industry lobby group; Gay Huey Evans, currently running the London arm of Tribeca Global Management, Citigroup’s hedge fund operation, survived several organizational reshuffles during a stint at the FSA in senior markets and exchanges roles.
An external candidate would almost certainly suffer a pay cut: Tiner took home £573,000 ($1.1 million) last year on base pay of £400,000. Still, as Herbst notes, there’s also the likelihood that one will eventually win a knighthood. Tiner is considered a shoo-in.
