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Times Online – Alistair Darling has warned that he will impose tougher regulation to avoid a repeat of the banking crisis amid fears of a return of the bonus-driven, risk-taking culture in the City.
The Chancellor told The Independent newspaper that bankers who are too complacent will be “brought back to earth” by new legislation.
An important White Paper on the banking sector, due next week, will grant new powers to the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority (FSA), Mr Darling said.
He promised “new tools” for the regulatory bodies to strengthen their powers, which could mean that the FSA will be able to extend its reach to hedge funds, some of the riskiest investment funds.
Crain – For years, Dan Loeb was the hedge fund world’s hanging judge, firing off blistering letters to hapless chief executives that condemned them for their shortcomings.
“Do what you do best,” he hissed in a 2005 letter to a soon-to-be-gone CEO. “Retreat to your waterfront mansion in the Hamptons. … The matter of repairing the mess you have created should be left to professional management.”
How times change. After years of posting average gains of 27%, Mr. Loeb’s Third Point hedge fund crashed to earth last year with a shattering 33% loss. In response, many investors grabbed their money and ran, driving assets under management to less than $2 billion from more than $5 billion previously. Now it’s Mr. Loeb who’s left to clean things up—or face oceanfront exile.
Baltimore Sun – If there is anything we have learned from the crisis in the financial sector, it’s the urgent need for more regulation. Had federal regulators been more vigilant or wielded greater powers, all this suffering and heartache might have been averted. That’s the story we’ve been told, and it must bring a rare smile to the face of Bernard Madoff.
Mr. Madoff was the manager of a Wall Street investment fund that he allegedly confessed to his sons was "one big lie" and "a giant Ponzi scheme." But "giant" fails to capture the scale of his fraud, which may have lost $50 billion, more than the entire gross domestic product of most of the countries on Earth.
