The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have ditched their joint investigations and will not be taking action against former senior HBOS managers employed during the bank’s collapse in the 2008 financial crash.
Regulators have previously been criticised for failing to act on the collapse of the bank which was one of the most significant moments of the crisis.
The investigations which eventually began in 2016, were in response to Andrew Green QC’s November 2015 report into the reasonableness of the scope of then regultor the Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) enforcement investigations in relation to the failure of HBOS.
The PRA and the FCA eventually succeded the FSA in April 2013.
The bodies’ joint investigations examined the performance of certain former senior managers at HBOS in the years before its failure and considered whether or they should be subject to an order which would prohibit them from performing certain roles within the financial services industry.
The bodies say they conducted rigorous and forensic investigations, with evidence gathered in order to assess whether or not each individual may lack fitness and propriety to hold certain senior roles within the financial services industry in the future.
Over the course of these investigations, they gathered more than two million documents, interviewed former HBOS senior managers, engaged extensively with the parties, and undertook substantial analysis of contemporaneous documentary evidence considering those senior managers’ roles and responsibilities at HBOS ahead of its failure in 2008.
“In line with standard practice, the authorities’ independent decision-makers reviewed the matters under investigation and have each determined that no enforcement action should be taken against these former HBOS senior managers. These investigations have therefore been closed,” they concluded.