LONDON: Britain’s largest mortgage provider Lloyds Banking Group Public Limited Company asked for an exemption from a rule that would require a separate board of directors for consumer banking operations.
The lender asked the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority to waive a requirement to set up a separate board for its consumer bank under a firewall separating safer operations from trading activities. Lloyds and the PRA declined to comment.
British rivals Barclays Public Limited Company and HSBC Holdings Public Limited Company with larger trading and investment banking businesses, 90 per cent of Lloyds’s activities already fall within the firewall.
The UK’s largest lenders were asked to submit a preliminary plan by today of their estimated legal and operating structures to meet an overhaul designed to avoid a repeat of the 2008 global turmoil that toppled Lehman Brothers Holdings Incorporation.
Iain Coke, head of financial services at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales said we should expect a period of negotiation between banks and the regulator over the details, and for plans to evolve.
Further he said Banks are taking very different approaches and some have even been challenging key requirements.
