Letter: Gov­ernance ques­tions for Lon­don stock mar­ket boss

You quote the Lon­don Stock Exchange boss Julia Hog­gett, a former Fin­an­cial Con­duct Author­ity reg­u­lator, wel­com­ing the gov­ern­ment’s decision to scrap plans for tighter cor­por­ate gov­ernance (“Stricter com­pany dis­clos­ure rules shelved”, Report, Octo­ber 17). Hog­gett is quoted as say­ing that “ever increas­ing cor­por­ate gov­ernance pro­cesses” had “impacted the effect­ive­ness of lis­ted com­pan­ies and the stand­ing of the UK over other cap­ital mar­kets”.

One won­ders from where she draws such evid­ence?

The dis­carded pro­pos­als, already watered down even without a hint of a UK ver­sion of the US Sar­banes-Oxley regime, offered a hope that UK mar­kets might in future avoid cor­por­ate scan­dals of the likes of Caril­lion or Patis­serie Valerie.

Rather than call­ing for less cor­por­ate gov­ernance reg­u­la­tion, might the LSE and FCA — the FCA’s cur­rent chief exec­ut­ive is a former boss of the LSE — ensure such reg­u­la­tions as we cur­rently have actu­ally work?

This might just rein­force the trust needed to under­pin mar­ket func­tion­ing and rekindle demand for equity invest­ment from pen­sion funds which have been pro­gress­ively dis­suaded, in part by the reg­u­lat­ors, from hold­ing stakes in UK-lis­ted com­pan­ies.

Barry T Gamble
Ban­bury, Oxford­shire, UK