ABSTRACT

In 1997 the newly-elected Labour Government in the United Kingdom transferred responsibility for the prudential supervision of commercial banks from the Bank of England to a newly-established body, the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The FSA was to take on responsibility for, and combine, both the prudential and the conduct of business supervision for virtually all financial institutions (banks of all kinds, finance houses, mutual savings institutions, insurance companies, etc.), and financial markets. So, during the course of 1998 most of the banking supervisors who had been working together in a designated section of the Bank moved together, en bloc, to the new headquarters of the FSA at Canary Wharf, a few miles further east.