Britain’s Finance Regulator Cancels Bonus Pay for Top Officials

(Bloomberg) -- Britain’s market regulator has decided to stop paying bonuses to its top officials as it continues to face heavy criticism for its failure to stop a multimillion-pound bond scandal that hit retail investors.

Charles Randell, chair of the Financial Conduct Authority, told U.K. lawmakers on Monday that the regulator’s executive committee members won’t receive performance-related remuneration going forward. The committee’s bonuses were also canceled for 2020 and in the current financial year “despite having performed, in my view, outstandingly in its response to Covid,” Randell said.

The FCA decided that “it should take this opportunity to reduce both higher pay packages for their exco members and the average levels of exco pay,” Randell said during a hearing into the FCA’s lapses overseeing London Capital & Finance Plc.

Nikhil Rathi, the FCA’s new chief executive officer, said he hoped to end a culture of risk aversion that might prevent the watchdog from acting against a firm. “I think we need to be ready to be more proactive, take more interventions, recognizing that if we’re taking balanced decisions some of those may be challenged and in some cases we may lose.”

“Certainly it’s my intention to move the organization in a direction where we’re willing to take more risk,” Rathi said.

Read more on how the FCA handled the mini-bond scandal

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