Bob Lyddon’s comments on George Osborne’s move to allow Chinese banks to set up wholesale banking branches in London were recently published on Reuters, in The Independent and i newspapers:
“Osborne also said that Britain’s financial regulators will start talks with Chinese banks in London to open branches for their wholesale businesses…The move will be welcomed by Chinese banks that were reported to have complained last year that the rules made it hard to operate in Britain, prompting them to move much of their business to Luxembourg.
But it also drew criticism that Osborne is going against the trend of requiring tougher rules on capital adequacy and against money laundering.
“He (Osborne) can’t do this without flatly contradicting what he has done in other areas,” said Bob Lyddon, general secretary of IBOS Association, a London-based alliance of large international banks in Europe and the Americas.”
