FCA will publish full RBS-GRG report “in weeks”
The boss of the Financial Conduct Authority has told the Treasury Select Committee it will publish the full report into Royal Bank of Scotland's restructuring unit GRG "in weeks".
But committee chair Nicky Morgan has suggested she may force publication even earlier.
Speaking this afternoon Andrew Bailey admitted that he had refused a direct request made by the committee last autumn to ascertain if RBS would be ready for full publication of the report, because the bank had in the past insisted it could not be published "unless it was modified, corrected, clarified and appropriate context put around it".
He said this was "unacceptable", which is why the summary was published.
Bailey added that he was "surprised" when RBS changed its position at a Treasury Select Committee hearing last week, saying it would be prepared for the report to be published without their intervention. Things changed "dramatically" at that point, he said.
But Bailey insisted the report could not be published immediately because individuals who may be identified had to be contacted first. "It would be very difficult to go to people and ask for their consent for publication while [another investigation] is ongoing," he said, adding this additional probe should be concluding within weeks.
Treasury Select Committee chair Nicky Morgan pointed out that one MP – Labour's Clive Lewis – already has a copy of the full report. Lewis revealed this in the Commons yesterday, damning the FCA's summary as a "sanitised" version of what he had read.
Morgan confirmed this report has been handed to her office, telling Bailey. "You will be aware that the committee has powers to compel publication, so I am going to write to you in next couple of days with clear request to publish and a timescale within which to publish. Otherwise I think it will be the case that the FCA will find events overtake them in terms of publication of that report."
More to follow….
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