City bankers are trying a new tack to improve their less-than-diplomatic relations with financial regulators in the European Union. They’ve appointed veteran U.K. Financial Services Authority policymaker David Green to be, effectively, the City’s ambassador to the EU. In April the 57-year-old Green will open the financial district’s first-ever overseas office in Brussels, where he’ll attempt to influence EU thinking on financial regulations before they’re drafted.
The Corporation of London, which governs London’s financial district and officially named Green to the post, was apparently drawn to his long experience and his record as a champion of national, rather than pan-European, financial regulation. Green, who studied classics and economics at Cambridge and Germany’s University of Mainz, is well known in EU capitals after spending nearly 30 years working on international affairs and banking supervision at the Bank of England. He joined the FSA in 1998.
Green has clashed with the European Central Bank when it has tried to gain a greater say over banking supervision. But the City’s new emissary insists he isn’t a knee-jerk Euroskeptic. For instance, he says that Europe may need greater harmonization of regulations in certain places -- such as in implementing the proposed Basel II capital rules -- to guarantee a level playing field. “There may be some areas where having things exactly the same are pro-competitive and pro-efficiency,” he says. “This is not the Square Mile versus Brussels.”
Perhaps, but the City is clearly serious about gaining more influence in Brussels, where it has often found itself fighting rearguard actions against legislative initiatives -- like the proposed Investment Services Directive. London investment bankers argue that the measure, which seeks to strengthen investor-protection rules in the EU’s single market, would impose harmful and costly restrictions on institutional trading.
