The Financial Services Authority is expected to admit defeat in efforts to publish its controversial report into RBS, which it had originally pledged to release in March.
Taxpayers are still waiting to see the results of an investigation into what went wrong, including an examination of the behaviour of Sir Fred Goodwin and other top executives.
Yet two and a half years after the banking crisis unfolded, sources close to the affair believe the draft report is still a long way from publication.
Reports have suggested Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the powerful cross-party Commons Treasury Select Committee, is in talks to be appointed ‘independent validator’ of the report as the FSA seeks to head off criticism over its failure to produce the document.
However, sources close to the regulator said a senior City figure was more likely to be chosen, although Mr Tyrie is thought to be involved in the appointment process.
The FSA declined to comment on Mr Tyrie’s involvement, but an appointment is likely to be announced shortly along with further details of how the inquiry will progress.
Sir Fred is also under intense Parliamentary pressure to come clean over his privacy super-injunction.
MPs and peers have demanded to know whether the ‘private matters’ Sir Fred has been allowed to conceal behind a secrecy order had any bearing on the collapse of the bank he ran, RBS, which has so far cost the taxpayer £45billion to bail out.
Former Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott used parliamentary privilege to put down a Lords question asking if Sir Fred’s injunction relates to events that happened while he was chief executive of RBS.
He also asked if those events would be revealed in, and considered by, the FSA report into the fall of the bank. The FSA declined to comment.
The watchdog is said to have been unable to overcome legal complexities in getting a report cleared by RBS lawyers.
Lawyers for the bank believe there may be factual inaccuracies that could leave it open to lawsuits in the U.S.
It is also believed that lawyers acting for Sir Fred and Johnny Cameron, former head of RBS’s investment bank, have some objections.
FSA chairman Lord Turner caused outrage in December by announcing that the FSA report had cleared Sir Fred and fellow former directors of wrongdoing, and refusing to publish a report it had commissioned from PriceWaterhouseCoopers accountants at a cost of £7.7million.
After pressure from Chancellor George Osborne and Business Secretary Vince Cable, the watchdog agreed to publish its own report.
The full PwC document will remain hidden from the public. The FSA’s own report has already missed its March deadline. The watchdog cannot give an updated timetable on when the report is due.
RBS is now 83 per cent owned by the taxpayer after the bank failed at the height of the financial crisis – largely blamed on its takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro.
So far, only one RBS manager, Mr Cameron, has suffered any sanction from City watchdogs.
He agreed not to work in the financial services industry again in a senior executive capacity. In return, the FSA said it would not pursue disciplinary proceedings.
Sir Fred took a job at an Edinburgh firm of architects and has a pension from the bank of £342,000 a year.Source www.dailymail.co.uk...
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